10/02/2020

(AU) Climate Change Could Lead To Increase In Dangerous Firestorms That Were Once 'Rare'

Sydney Morning Herald - Laura Chung | Nick Moir

Scientists fear climate change will cause a once "rare and unique" weather event to become more common, as they race to develop predictive modelling and tools to help them better understand pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCB), commonly referred to as firestorms.
Jason Sharples, a professor of bushfire dynamics at the University of NSW, records the frequency of these storms around Australia and said between 1998, when relevant records started, and 2018, there were 62 confirmed pyroCBs.
But this bushfire season has seen that figure jump.
Lightning from a pyroCB storm breaks through while bushfires rage nearby. Credit: Nick Moir
Since September last year, at least another 30 pyroCBs have been recorded Australia-wide, while a further 15 possible storms are still being investigated.
"It's concerning, obviously, but I think this season comes down to extreme dryness and energy that the fuels were able to put out as they burnt," he said.
He notes that in previous years, the pyroCB pattern was irregular - with one or two events every three years or so, but recently these storms have increased in frequency.


Bushfires can create their own weather, generating ‘pyrocumulonimbus’ clouds and storms.

Professor Sharples is also a volunteer firefighter in the ACT and said he has been through an area ravaged by a pyroCB once. It was in the aftermath of the Black Saturday 2009 fires and he said the scene was "like a bomb had gone off".
"It was like a giant had taken a blow torch to it [the town]. You really get a moonscape feel," he said.

'Phenomenal increase'
A pyroCB event occurs when the intense heat from the fire causes air and smoke to rise and draws in cooler air.  If the air cools enough, the moisture in the plume condenses and forms a pyrocumulus cloud.
Under the right conditions, the cloud can mix with ice particles and cause lightning, producing a thunderstorm - known as pyrocumulonimbus.
The storms can cause unpredictable changes in fire behaviour, making it more dangerous for firefighters and nearby communities.
Fire researcher at the Bureau of Meteorology Mika Peace said over the past few decades, the knowledge about how fire and weather interact has increased.
"Since then, there's been a massive research effort in understanding pyroCBs and more recently predicting them," she said.
Dr Peace said in the 1950s and '60s, fire information focused on what was happening on the ground. Since then, scientists have turned their attention to what is happening above them too.
"This season has been unprecedented [for pyroCBs]... we've seen multiple pyroCBs developing on the same day over individual fires," she said.
In past fire seasons, these incidents were "rare and unique", said NSW RFS manager of the planning and predictive services unit Simon Heemstra.
But this season,  there has been a "phenomenal increase" in pyroCB events.
Dr Heemstra said one of the dangers of pyroCB events is the long-range spotting of fires up to 30 kilometres away from the main fire front.
Photographs show spot fires breaking ahead of the Clear Range Fire along the Monaro Highway on February 1. Credit: Dean Sewell
Other dangers include fire tornadoes, downbursts of air causing the fire to hit the ground and burst outwards and lightning which can cause new fires up to 60 kilometres away.
"Some days, state operations issued five or six alerts for different fires around the state because of pyrocumulus columns. [PyroCB] are a big concern. We'll be seeing more and more as a feature for the future," Dr Heemstra said.
Scientists note climate change will alter ground-level weather and the upper atmosphere, making conditions more conducive to pyroCBs. This risk highlights the need for more predictive modelling and tools.
At the moment, predicting where pyroCBs will hit is difficult, with the RFS erring on the side of caution as the consequences are too severe if something goes wrong.
The Herald's chief photographer Nick Moir, who has spent the last few months documenting the bushfires and their devastation, said he has been close to several pyroCB events this season, including a run-in at the Gospers Mountain fire.
Over this fire season, NSW experienced several pyroCB events, including during the Gospers Mountain fire. Credit: Nick Moir
"I was underneath it when it went pyrocumulonimbus, there was rain, hail and lightning all around the area. I was in a burnt-out area so I was safe, but there were strong winds, and, in particular, lightning ahead of the actual fire front and the storm," he said.
Former Tasmanian fire chief Mike Brown spent 39 years fighting fires and has only seen one pyroCB which was in the 2013 Dunalley fire, east of Hobart.
"It created strong winds and severe updraft, we had an aircraft working on that fire and they reported they had the worst turbulence they had ever experienced," he said.
"You’re organising tactics according to winds going a certain direction, but then suddenly [when the pyroCB occurs] there are unpredictable winds and weather patterns that are causing unpredictable and extreme fire weather conditions."
Mr Brown said at the time fire crews noticed burning material and embers being carried up high into the sky. Following the fire, they noticed scorched birds all along the beaches and believe they were burnt to death when the embers caught them unawares.
While this fire season has been marked by devastation, it provides a unique opportunity for scientists around the world to learn more about pyroCB events: what causes them, the safety risks associated with them and what they mean for the future of firefighting.

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'Good' Climate Policy Can No Longer Be Our Goal. It's Time To Reach For Perfect

The Guardian - Greg Jericho

The Gillard government actually implemented a carbon price. Why are we so lacking in ambition now?
‘Let us be honest: the government is paving the way to climate-change hell with bad intentions.’ Photograph: Manan Vatsyayana/AFP via Getty Images
While listening this week to the Guardian Australia editor, Lenore Taylor, on the Full Story podcast speaking with sadness and exasperation about the past 30 years of climate change policy, I thought about good intentions and perfection.
We often hear that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. It’s one of those sayings that, when you really think about it, is just a squib.
The reality is these good intentions that are paving our way to hell are not so much good as ignorant, and quite often (such as with much of Indigenous policy) outright racist. They are really considered good only by those seeking to excuse the action in the first place.
And while good people might occasionally do wrong with actual good intentions, there is a much higher strike rate of people with bad intentions doing bad things.
That the road to hell may be paved with good intentions means we should ensure our good intentions are not ignorant or biased; and it sure as heck does not give an excuse to those with bad intent.
We certainly have seen a plethora of bad intent with respect to climate-change policy since 1990.
Similarly, you could probably fill a long list of quotes by people over the past decade or so who have suggested of climate change policy that “we should not make the perfect the enemy of the good”.
And yet rather than this suggesting we need to compromise, what it has come to mean is that we should excuse policy that is bad, because it is not perfect.
If we are so worried about the perfect being the enemy of the good, wouldn’t we at least see some evidence of someone in the major parties actually suggesting a policy that could be described as perfect?
The science of climate change tells us we need to reduce emissions and the sooner we do it the less the impact will be.
And yet rather than see any “perfect” policy with this aim, instead we get supposedly good policy accompanied with caveats – talk of the need for transitional fuels such as gas or that a coalmine is fine – hey, let’s not be perfect! (And please don’t not argue about just how good something has to be before perfect becomes its enemy).
So bad has this become that the carbon price instituted by the Gillard government is now considered some perfect policy too far beyond our political grasp.
Why are we so lacking in ambition?
And given the other side have an ambition fuelled by bad intentions, it might be worthwhile when trying to compromise to ensure negotiation starts from a position rather closer to perfect than just “good”.
Because let us be honest: the government is paving the way to climate change hell with bad intentions.
The government is replete with climate-change deniers who intend to block and retard any action to reduce emissions.
They will do this through obfuscation and outright misinformation – such as the lies about the impact of the ALP’s electric car policy during the last election, or the current lies about the bushfires.
On Wednesday, Peter Dutton told ABC’s Afternoon Briefing that “obviously, as we’ve all pointed out, we’re experiencing hotter weather, longer summers, but did the bushfires start in some of these regions because of climate change? No. It started because somebody lit a match. There are 250 people, as I understand it, or more that have been charged with arson. That’s not climate change.”
It’s also not the truth.
The prime minister has equally betrayed his bad intentions on the issue.
He told the media on Thursday that, “I’m not going to allow a confined, narrow debate when it comes to understanding what it means to live in the climate we’re going to live in. It’s not just about emissions reduction. That’s important. But it’s also about resilience and it’s also about adaptation”
His intent is clearly to actually narrow the debate by excluding as much as possible any discussion of emissions, and instead to focus on building dams as though that is some saviour for a country affected by climate change and by greater periods of drought.
Scott Morrison – and other members of his cabinet – have no good intentions when they suggest Australia is doing well by meeting and beating out Kyoto commitments.
Those commitments are frauds.
The Howard government purposefully ensured Australia alone could include land use because the Kyoto base year of 1990 involved a spectacular level of land clearing, as does 2005, the base year for our Paris agreement.
Saying we will meet and beat our targets is like bragging that you are meeting your target of drinking less beer by comparing how many glasses you drink per day now to what you drank on the day of your 21st birthday party.
Last week Morrison told the National Press Club the United States were doing great because of its increase in gas-produced electricity and that “between 2005 and 2017 US emissions fell by about 13 per cent, that’s just a click over what we have achieved, which is 12.8 per cent by the way.”
What he failed to note was those drops occurred prior to the election of Trump and its withdrawal from the Paris agreement and that it is not on target to meet what were the US’s Paris targets.
His suggestion that Australia is nearly doing just as well is also one of bad faith.
Yes, from 2005 to 2017 we reduced our emissions by 12.8%, just below that of the US, but only if we include land use. If we exclude that very dodgy measure, the US’s emissions still fell by 12%, but Australia’s actually rose by 6.2%.
We are not doing our bit, and you would only argue we are if your intention was to ensure that good policy is not merely blocked but bad policy is pushed.
There has been some talk this week about new Greens leader Adam Bandt’s call for a “Green New Deal” and whether or not Australia should adopt such a US-style political term.
To be honest I’m not all that fussed about the marketing, so long as the policy has large ambition.
We need some good intentions and we need to aim for perfection.
The challenges and forces against action on climate change are large and powerful. As the past 30 years have shown us, being content to argue for a “good” third- or fourth-best policy is no way to win this fight, and neither is allowing those with bad intentions to tell us that what they want is good.

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UK's Kew Gardens To Help Protect Australia's Plants After Wildfire

Reuters - Elizabeth Howcroft

LONDON - Britain is to protect Australia’s plants and trees by helping the emergency collection of seeds in areas devastated by wildfires and storing some of the rarest specimens in the world’s biggest wild seed bank.
Dr Elinor Breman of Kew Millennium Seed Bank poses for a photograph in a sub-zero seed store at a facility in Wakehurst, southern Britain February 7, 2020. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls
Scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London will help the emergency seed collection and store precious specimens at its Millennium Seed Bank (MSB), a giant trove of seeds which acts as an insurance policy for plants and trees.
Over 2.3 billion seeds from 190 countries are stored in air-tight glass containers stacked in huge -20°C freezers underground and can be used to grow a new generation of plants in years to come. It currently has 41,000 different species.
For the collecting, Kew scientists will work alongside colleagues in the Australian Seed Bank Partnership.
“We ... are pleased to be able to support their efforts, as part of our ongoing partnership to address biodiversity loss through seed-banking in Australia,” said the MSB’s Elinor Breman in a statement.
She added: “Kew’s scientists will work with the ASBP to conduct emergency seed-collecting in areas devastated by the bushfires and longer-term germination research, which will hopefully aid the international effort to restore habitats more quickly in this precious and biodiverse region.”
Kew has worked with Australian seed banks since 2000, sharing expertise on seed collection processes, conservation and research so that the seeds of plant species considered rare or threatened can be banked and conserved for the future.
So far, 12,450 seed collections representing 8,900 Australian species, all of which are saved in local seed banks, have been duplicated and stored in Kew’s MSB.
Australia’s wildfires have burned through an area the size of Greece since September, in what the government there has called an ecological disaster.
The protected species of Wollemi Pines - prehistoric trees which outlived the dinosaurs - survived the wildfires.
Others were not so lucky: wood-chopping company Kangaroo Island Plantation Timbers suspended trading in its shares after severe fire-damage meant 90% of its tree crop was no longer productive.
The collaboration with Kew was announced by visiting British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.
“This further collaboration between the Australian Seed Bank Partnership and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, will help protect Australia’s precious biodiversity following the terrible bushfires,” Raab said.
“We stand shoulder to shoulder with the Australian people in the face of this challenge,” he said.

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