Australia's Wildfires

It is well-known how all of us started the magical 2020, with the probability of World War III, wildfires in Australia, then the COVID-19, Brexit, and so on. In short terms, there have been many events that have shaken the world. For that reason, let’s take a look more deeply at a significant episode, namely the 2019-2020 Australian Bushfire season.

How it all started?

It is not new that wildfires in Australia are common due to the extreme temperatures they reach there, but this one seems to have affected the country more than ever. The 19-20 Australian Bushfire season, also known as the Black Summer, started in June 2019 and ended in May 2020, therefore we can see that all these disasters lasted for almost a year. The bushfires spread all over the country in different regions such as New South Wales, Sydney, Riverina, Victoria, and so forth. These fires destroyed about 18.6 million hectares, thousands of houses and buildings, and killed around 34 people. Three billion animals were killed or displaced by this catastrophe, which probably will result in a drastic extinction of many animal species. Now comes the great question “How all this happened?”. Well…you will be surprised how many factors influenced this wildfire, being one of the worst disasters in modern history. Dry lightning represents one of the prior issues this country faces every day and a major part of this crisis. With such high temperatures, the rain evaporates really easily, and, for that reason, lightning strikes dry vegetation, which causes bushfires and, because 2019 had been the hottest record year for Australia, it’s understandable how these bushfires were at a completely different level. The climate in Australia has warmed by more than one degree Celsius over the past century, leading to increasing rainfall. With carbon emission being at less than exceptional numbers, NASA estimated that 306 million tonnes of CO2 had been emitted. Unfortunately, the causes of the Australian wildfires are countless.

Factors and results

If we look from the outside of this story, we can observe all the impacts of the Australian bushfires directly on the whole environment, whether we are talking about animals, vegetation, or people. According to the UN Environment Programme, in January 2020 reports indicated that Canberra has the worst air quality index of any major city in the world. If this is not a cause for concern for the health of the entire population, then I honestly don’t know what it is. It shows that the effects of smoke exposure and inhalation range from eye and respiratory tract irritation to more serious disorders, including reduced lung function, bronchitis, exacerbated asthma, and premature death, people with respiratory diseases being the most exposed to the coronavirus pandemic and the other health problems left by it. A significant change in the air quality is also observed in the CO2 emissions, the forests being able to achieve net-zero emissions, but the 2019-2020 Australian Bushfire season added 306 trillion tonnes, as much as Australia's average annual carbon dioxide emission in just three months. However, besides all the physical, direct impact of the fires, let’s talk about how all these tragic events affected human’s mental health; many people experience trauma from the experience of being evacuated from their own houses to save themselves, but it is a fact that all these wildfires won’t stop if things will continue to go this way, from the environmental, political, economical or other points of view. In spite of everything, affected communities could have long-lasting mental health impacts because of these disasters and could live in fear of not knowing what’s coming next.

In Australia, bushfires represent not only an ecological crisis but also a humanitarian and an identity one, this affecting from several points of view. But its major results are not new for the specialists, who predicted that 2020 is a turning point, which means that some parts of Australia will start to be uninhabitable, given that this country has been facing problems like this since 1926 when Black Sunday happened in Victoria, then in 2009, when Black Saturday, the bushfire that will remain in Australia’s history for being the most catastrophic wildfire in that country, happened and so on (as you can see, most bushfires are named with “Black”).

What’s coming next?

That’s a really good question actually. The German oceanographer and climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf says that climate scientists believe wildfire conditions are worsening during climate change’s effect on water lever which leads to fewer rainfalls in the extremely dry areas. Australia is vulnerable because it already experiences a hot and dry climate, henceforth, it didn’t even need climate change to make everything worse. However, to end on a bright note, thousands of kilograms of food have been dropped from the air to feed the animals from the affected forest. How thoughtful!

Posted by Matt Kean on Twitter