24/11/2019

(AU) Australia Bushfires Factcheck: Are This Year's Fires Unprecedented?

The Guardian -  | 

Firefighters tackle the Gospers Mountain fire outside Sydney. Parts of eastern Australia have had record low rainfall in 2019, contributing to an unusually ferocious early bushfire season. Photograph: Dean Lewins/EPA
Australia has suffered a devastating early bushfire season with fires across several states burning through hundreds of thousands of hectares and destroying hundreds of properties with the loss of six lives.
New South Wales has been the most severely hit, with more than 1.65m hectares razed, an area significantly larger than suburban Sydney. All six deaths occurred in there and more than 600 homes were destroyed. At one point firefighters were battling a fire front about 6,000km long, equivalent to a return trip between Sydney and Perth.
In Queensland, 20 homes have been lost and about 180,000ha burned. In Victoria, where the bushfire season usually starts later, 100km/h winds fanned more than 60 blazes during an unprecedented heatwave on Thursday. The most extreme warning, a code red, was issued for the north-western and central regions. The state’s emergency services minister, Lisa Neville, compared it to “the worst conditions you’d see in February or March”.
Seven districts in South Australia were rated as being at catastrophic risk of fire on Wednesday as temperatures soared into the 40s. A blaze on the Yorke peninsula burned through about 5,000ha, damaging at least 11 properties and injuring 33 people. Western Australia has also experienced early bushfires in several regions, with fears of much worse to come over summer, and there were minor bushfires this week in Tasmania.

Is this unprecedented?
Australia has always had devastating bushfires, a point emphasised by some columnists and newspaper editorials, but scientists say the fire conditions this year are without parallel on several fronts.
Let’s start with the situation in NSW. Over the past 50 years, there have been just two calendar years in which more of the state has burned than this year: 1974 and 1984. With this year, those two were much larger than any other year, as this graph shows, based on data from the University of Wollongong’s centre for environmental risk management of bushfires:

NSW fires: total area burned
Showing the total area burned in hectares per year,
with a year-to-date figure for 2019
Guardian graphic
Source: Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfire

This year, which still has six weeks to run, sits fractionally behind 1984. Both are a long way behind 1974, when more than 3.5m hectares burned.
But scientists says fire conditions today are fundamentally different, and fundamentally worse in many ways, when compared with some of the fires experienced in the past.
The centre’s director, Ross Bradstock, says the 1974 fires burned through largely remote country mostly in the state’s far west, devouring green, non-woody herbaceous plants. The conditions were created by above average rainfall which produced ample fuel in outback grasslands.
By contrast, the fires in the east of the state this year have been fuelled by a lack of rain. The extent of the fires is in significant part driven by the amount of dry fuel available, some of it in highly unlikely places, and the amount of dry fuel is linked to the record-breaking drought.
Rainfall between January and August 2019 was the lowest on record in some areas, including the northern tablelands of NSW and Queensland’s southern downs. Parts of both states experienced record low soil moisture. As temperatures and wind speeds increased but humidity remained low, conditions were primed for small fires to become major conflagrations.

Drought in Australia
Rainfall deficiency from January 2017 to August 2019
Rainfall deficiency compares rainfall over a given period with the long-term average, and then determines if it is below average, and by how much. Here, you can see how bad the drought has been over a 32 month period with rainfall percentiles showing areas with the lowest rainfall on record, a severe deficiency in rainfall, or a serious deficiency.
Guardian graphic
Source: BoM



Bradstock says it has put NSW in uncharted territory: “For the forests and woodlands in the eastern half of the state, this is unprecedented.
“Natural features in the landscape which often impede fires, like these wetter forest communities, are just burning. There is likely to be long-term ecological and other environmental consequences.”
The director of the fire centre at the University of Tasmania, David Bowman, says the unprecedented nature of the fires this spring can be seen through their intensity and geographical spread across the country, noting at time of writing there were fires in five states.
The extent of the bushfire risk is illustrated through Bureau of Meteorology data of the cumulative forest fire danger index across winter.

Winter bushfire weather conditions, 2019
Showing the cumulative forest fire danger index (FFDI) for winter (June to August) 2019 compared with all winters since 1950. The FFDI combines measurment of rainfall, evaporation, wind speed, temperature and humidity, and the cumulative FFDI is the sum of daily values over the specified period.  
Guardian graphic
Source: BoM

The map shows the overwhelming majority of the country, with a few exceptions in Victoria, central Queensland and western Tasmania, experienced between “above average” and “highest on record” fire conditions in winter when compared with the average since 1950.
Bowman says the extraordinary nature of the fire season is clear on several measures: the extent of area burned, and the underlying dryness and poor air quality affecting people across the country. Smoke in NSW and Queensland has prompted a rise in people seeking emergency treatment for respiratory problems.
But as illustrative evidence he emphasises the areas affected in which fire has never or rarely burned in the past, including rainforests, wet eucalypt forests, dried-out swamps and organic matter in the soil where the water table has dropped.
He says one of the most striking images of the extreme fire conditions in recent weeks were those of a devastated banana plantation at Taylors Arm, west of Macksville, in northern NSW. He lists it alongside the loss of other landscapes – including Gondwana-era vegetation in the Tasmanian world heritage wilderness area that in some cases had not burned for more than 1,000 years – as evidence of change.
“There’s just layer upon layer upon layer of differences,” Bowman says. “If you narrow your frame you can say ‘nothing to see’. But if you broaden your aperture, it’s clear.
“I wrote a book on Australian rainforests. I’ve seen every Australian rainforest biome, and the fact that multiple versions of these ecosystems right around the country are burning all within the same couple of years … This is a really confronting warning light.”

What do other professionals dealing with fire say?
They largely back the scientists.
As has been widely reported, 23 former fire and emergency services chiefs from across the country have jointly warned climate crisis is making bushfires deadlier and the season longer, and called on the government to act.
Neil Bibby, former chief executive of Victoria’s Country Fire Authority and one of the 23, says: “It has been the last couple of years where we have been realising things have started to change and this is the new future … It will only get worse.”
The chief executive of the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council, Stuart Ellis, says this bushfire season already has an “enduring nature”. “[It’s] just relentless,” he says.
Andrew Gissing, an emergency management expert at the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC and a consultant with Risk Frontiers, says an analysis of building losses from bushfire seasons back to 1925 suggests this season is already the third worst in NSW. In Queensland, about a third of all financial losses from burned buildings since 1925 have occurred this year.

Is this climate change in action?
No fire can be blamed on climate change alone, but Bowman says the rise in higher temperatures, extreme dryness, worsening fire seasons, extreme bursts of fire weather and behaviour and the spread of fire across the country all align with scenarios painted by climate change projections.
Greenhouse gas emissions have a clear impact on rising temperatures and, through that, an indirect link on increased dryness in eastern Australia. A recent study found the extreme temperatures that drove historic 2018 bushfires in northern Queensland were four times more likely to have happened because of human-caused climate change
In short, climate change can and does makes bushfires worse.
Bradstock says a range of published research has found escalating atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are increasing the risk of the type of fires affecting NSW’s eastern forests, but reducing the likelihood of a similar fire to that experienced in 1974.
The elevated scores on the forest fire danger index in winter this year meant not only that the risk of bushfires was significantly heightened as the warmer seasons began, but opportunities for hazard reduction burning had been limited in some parts of the country – although NSW authorities still managed to meet its annual target of 135,000ha of prescribed burning.
Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, from the University of New South Wales’ climate change research centre, says studies by the CSIRO and others have found the fire season has got longer, particularly in eastern Australia, where it is starting earlier. This is expected to continue until 2050 at least.
“We know that catastrophic conditions are now more likely to occur, and into spring as well,” she says.
On this year, Bradstock says: “I guess the most concerning thing to emphasise is it’s not over. We’re not even into summer yet.”

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(AU) Why It's So Wrong To Play Down Australia's Role In Fighting Climate Change

Sydney Morning Herald - Patrick Suckling

Patrick Suckling was Australia’s Ambassador for the Environment.
He recently joined Pollination, a specialist climate investment and advisory firm.
One of the more solemn yet uplifting duties during my time as high commissioner to India was commemorating Anzac Day – 2.5 million Indian soldiers served in World War II.
Australia has made the Anzac spirit part of our national soul. Our contribution to total forces in World War II was around 1.3 per cent.
Never did I hear in Delhi nor can I imagine anyone thinking in the well attended Anzac commemorations around Australia that our effort was irrelevant.
Yet as Sydney this week ranked among the most polluted cities in the world and fires torched our communities and country, we heard rehearsals of the view that whatever Australia does on climate change is irrelevant because our emissions are only around 1.3 per cent of the global total, and that Australians pressing for climate action are merely virtue signalling.
Smoke haze from bushfires blanketed Sydney this week. Credit: Renee Nowytarger
Its companion is the argument that amid the tragedy of our bushfires now is not the time to talk about climate change.
This argument has its equivalent in the US where, in the aftermath of all too familiar mass shootings, it is distressing to hear comment that it is not the time to talk about gun control.
Like the bleaching of our Great Barrier Reef, the scorching of these fires is the face of the future in a heating world.
Yes, we have always had fires: but they will be worse because we will be hotter, and drier.
Scientists constantly work to validate their theories. That’s their method. For decades now they’ve rigorously tested the evidence on the threats of climate change; and it keeps mounting.
Once, we may have thought them lost in an abstract world. Now, around the world, increasingly we see and feel ourselves the trauma from climate change.
Australia is among the most vulnerable to climate change. That is why our Parliament ratified the Paris Agreement. It is in our national interest.
No one country can solve the challenge but each must play its part.
Countries with emissions under 2 per cent of the global total make up around 40 per cent of global emissions. This includes Germany whose leadership on the renewable energy revolution would not have happened had it thought itself irrelevant and balked.
If we shrink through self-ascribed irrelevance instead of stretching to influence concerted global action on climate change then we desert our national interest.
More than most, we need to be on the front foot: increasingly active at home and pressing for more action overseas.
Absent the strongest collective effort, we reduce the prospect of limiting global temperature rise; ensuring more ferocious fires into the future where we will be condemned by our children and theirs for not having done all we could, individually and collectively.
Already we see glimmerings in their  school strikes against us not having done enough in the past, or now.
Much of the world looks to us for leadership.
This is not only because we are one of the wealthiest and most capable, often punching well above our weight, but also because Australia is an environmental icon known for its outstanding natural beauty and stewardship of country – reaching back 60,000 years for our Indigenous peoples.
The Hillville fire that destroyed homes two weeks ago. Credit: Nick Moir
If we shirk it is hard to see why developing countries, now the major source of emissions growth, should listen or lift.
If we falter we weaken the Paris Agreement, where for the first time developed and developing countries alike are committed to increasing climate action and being held accountable.
We all need to do more but a good start has been made, for example, China looks like its emissions will peak well before its 2030 target, possibly before 2025.
Bolstering the gains won’t occur with a mindset of our own impotence.
We also risk not making the most of the extraordinary opportunities in climate action.
It’s not a question of emissions reduction or jobs and growth, as the UK is demonstrating, having reduced emissions 40 per cent while growing the economy 70 per cent.
It’s a matter of harnessing our considerable competitive advantages in transition to a lower-emissions, more climate resilient  global economy; as two of our best entrepreneurs showed this week by embarking on a $22 billion solar investment intended to supply power to Singapore, among other things.
One of our best minds – Ross Garnaut – has just published a book on Australia's potential in a low-carbon future that everyone should read.
To reach this potential and address the magnitude of the climate challenge we are facing we can no longer be equivocal, or dismissive.
The fires in all their fury are telling us we must recognise the full seriousness of what is in front of us and step up.
That needs a plan, with policies for coming decades; uncertainty is no guide for the massive investments required for clean, green economic transformation and a defeatist view of our relevance is no compass for Australia to be the agent of our destiny.
Ask the Anzacs.

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It’s not just Venice. Climate change imperils ancient treasures everywhere.

Grist - 

The future of the past
FILIPPO MONTEFORTE / AFP via Getty Images
Saltwater rushed into St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice last week, submerging marble tombs, intricate mosaics, and centuries-old columns.
A man was spotted swimming across St. Mark’s Square, normally bustling with tourists, as the highest tide in 50 years swept through.
The “Floating City” of bridges, vaporetti, and gondolas is hardly a stranger to high tides. Venetians are accustomed to acqua alta, or “high water,” arriving in the fall. But as the city’s foundation sinks and sea levels rise, the floods are getting worse.
The basilica has submerged six times over the last 1,200 years. Tellingly, four of those instances were in the last two decades.
The rising saltwater presents a threat to the city’s prized architecture, including wall paintings and frescoes from the Renaissance. Early estimates put the damage around $1 billion so far.
It’s a vivid testament to the risks climate change poses to many of the world’s cultural treasures. In a fitting irony, minutes after Venice’s regional council rejected measures to fund renewable energy and replace diesel buses with cleaner ones, the council’s chamber was swept by floodwaters.
Since 2003, the city has been working on an infrastructure project known as Mose (as in Moses) for protection against high tides, but it’s still not up and running, having been bogged down in scandal, cost overruns, and other delays.
Venice has plenty of company — some 86 percent of UNESCO World Heritage sites like Venice in coastal regions of the Mediterranean are at risk from flooding and erosion, according to a study last year in the journal Nature.
The fate of cultural heritage — including museums, historical landmarks, and archaeological sites — often gets ignored in conversations about how to adapt to an overheating planet, said Linda Shi, an assistant professor of city and regional planning at Cornell University.
But it will likely play a bigger role in the coming years, she said, as people wake up to the threat. Last month brought the launch of the international Climate Heritage Network, a coalition of cities, tribes, businesses, universities, and other organizations that promise to recognize the harm climate change poses to iconic cultural places and harness “the power of cultural heritage for climate action.”
Many UNESCO World Heritage sites have survived wars, floods, and other disasters over the course of hundreds and even thousands of years.
Can they survive the climate crisis? Here’s a sampling of the landmarks at risk:
  • The statues of Easter Island
    The remote Pacific island, 2,200 miles off the coast of Chile, is known for its giant monolithic statues of heads carved more than a thousand years ago. (PSA, they’re not just heads — the rest of their bodies are buried underground.) The island’s coastline is rapidly eroding, and waves are beginning to lap at the statues and ancient burial sites.
  • The cedars of Lebanon
    The trees mentioned so often in the Bible are imperiled. The famous Forest of the Cedars of God is one of the most vulnerable sites in the world to climate change, which has brought hot and dry conditions inhospitable to the trees.
  • An ancient burial site in Russia
    The frozen tombs that are part of the Treasures of the Pazyryk Culture in Siberia risk thawing out — and therefore rotting — as temperatures rise. The site includes 2,500-year-old burial mounds and rock carvings from the ancient Scythian people.
  • Archaeological ruins in Tanzania
    At a 13th-century trading center called Kilwa Kisiwani, on a small island just off Tanzania’s coast, merchants handled a good chunk of the trade in the Indian Ocean — gold, perfumes, porcelain, and more — and spread Swahili culture far and wide. But the ruins could get washed away before archaeologists have more time to explore them.
  • The Stone Age villages of Scotland
    The Orkney Islands off Scotland’s north coast contain some of the oldest sites in the world, with some structures built around 5,000 years ago, before the Great Pyramid of Giza. Of the 3,000 archaeological sites on the islands, some have already crumbled under heavy rains and erosion, and roughly half are under threat.
  • Unique habitat in Yellowstone National Park
    Climate change is bringing ferocious fires and less snowfall to the greater Yellowstone region, which spans from Wyoming into parts of Montana and Idaho. Changing conditions could totally reshape its landscape, draining half of the area’s wetlands and turning its dense forests into open woodlands.
So what will get preserved, and what will the world lose? There’s a financial incentive to save Venice. Some 20 million tourists bring in billions of euros every year.
“We might be willing to pay to preserve places like Venice,” Shi said in a statement, “but few other cultural heritage sites and systems will benefit from such attention and funding.”
Many places are too remote to draw crowds, affording them a measure of protection. No tourists means no trampling. But it also means governments might not find the money to protect them. And that’s to say nothing of other legacies that tourists can’t visit, like oral histories and indigenous languages. They, too, could be submerged as communities are displaced by rising seas, hurricanes, and other climate disasters.

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