Australia's fires could change the country forever
Wildfires are a part of the natural rhythms of Australia’s environment. But scientists haven’t seen anything like this before.
Jan. 4, 2020, 6:17 AM EST
By Denise Chow
Wildfires are a part of the natural rhythms of Australia’s environment. But scientists haven’t seen anything like this before.
The country is grappling with some of the worst wildfires in its history. At least 12 million acres of land have already been scorched and more than 100 blazes are still active — and the season has yet to reach its peak.
The blazes threaten to reshape Australia’s ecology even in places where plants and animals have adapted to yearly fires.
“If species are adapted to one set of climatic conditions and are now being forced to regenerate in climatic conditions that are very different, it’s going to be a lot harder to come back,” said Camille Stevens-Rumann, an ecologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, who focuses her research on how ecosystems recover after major disturbances.
The impact of these fires is also providing a stark warning about the kinds of natural disasters that can be exacerbated by climate change, which is lengthening wildfire seasons in Australia, according to Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
“It’s really shocking and really horrible and as much as I hate to say ‘I told you so,’ climate scientists have been warning about this for a very long time — especially in Australia,” she said. “We knew that if we have drought and a heat wave, the whole country is a tinderbox. We knew it was going to happen.”
She said the biggest wildfires of the season typically break out in January or February, rather than in the spring.
These earlier-than-usual blazes could portend a worrisome trend that is echoed around the world.
“If you look at places like Portugal and Spain, they are seeing fires during the year when they didn’t historically see them,” Stevens-Rumann said. “In California, it’s hard to find a month where there isn’t a bad fire. This is one of those big concerns with climate change, that these fires are going to continue to be an issue.”
continues at nbcnews.com |
