Australia deploys military as bushfire infernos spread across the country. Largescale fire infernos inflicted damage to wildlife and property, not less than an atomic bomb [NYT, 2020]. Wild fires burnt 25 people, one billion animals and 25 million acre forests in Australia [Kelly 2020].
Australia is on front line of climate change. When roaring fire flames spread to Mallacoota at night the 4,000 residents fled for safety to the beach. Fire could not reach the water, but rained ash and embers from the sky. Australian Navy evacuated those who were cut off by fires to get out of Mallacoota. When New Year’s Eve firework display was launched on Sydney Harbour Bridge, the bush fires were ringing the city to the west, casting a pall on in the sky.
Australia’s Climate Council estimates cumulative damage from reduced agricultural and labor productivity might reach A$19 billion by 2030, A$211 billion by 2050 and a massive A$4 trillion by 2100. Kangaroo Island devastated by burning of 150,000 hectares in bushfires [ABC 2020]. University of Sydney estimates death of 480 million animals in New South Wales alone since September 2019 [Bloomberg 2019]. Fire has burnt 9 million acres forests and destroyed more than 900 homes in Australia. Temperature lurks around 40 to 50°C inflicting severe heatwave across the country. Australians blame the learning curve of politicians who have no capacity to learn from the past. Under Trump’s calculated demolition of science-based regulations, America is also on the same path to apocalypse [Darrian 2019].
Australia is in the grip of deadly wildfires burning across the country, triggering an emotive debate about the impact of climate change in the world’s driest-inhabited continent. The unprecedented scale of the crisis, and images of terrified tourists sheltering on beaches from the infernos, has shocked the world community. Australia is habitat of wildlife that is dying under burning trees [AFP 2019]. Australia is suffering daily life and property losses. Wildfires satellite images reflect an inferno, not an ordinary bushfire. Bushfires have spread over all of Australia and smoke looks like pall in Australian sky. Australia is on fire, Kangaroos and koala are crying for help [Shay 2019]
Kangaroos trying to escape out of forest fires [Shay 2019]
“Australia’s navy rushed to rescue thousands of holiday-makers from a wildfire-ravaged coastal community while many more struggled to escape endangered towns by road before extreme weather triggers fresh infernos in the nation’s southeast. Eight people have been killed in the bushfires that have swept through New South Wales and the neighboring state of Victoria this week, destroying hundreds of properties in rural towns crammed with tourists during the peak summer holiday season. Driven by strong winds and searing temperatures on New Year’s Eve, the blazes turned the sky blood red and rained down embers, forcing people to shelter on beaches or flee by fishing boats’ [Bloomberg 2019].
Large tracts of the Australian continent are ablaze. Beyond the toll in lives and property, the most remarkable thing about this bushfire season is that people can see it, taste it and feel it. While fires have long been a product of the country’s hot, dry climate, they remained a remote idea for most Australians — something you caught for a few minutes on the evening news. Now more than 20 people have died and scores are missing. Areas larger than Denmark have been razed. As recently as last week, temperature warnings for parts of Sydney climbed to 45 degrees Celsius. Most fires are on peripheral regions restricting access to beach waters.
Many visitors have already left Australia and others are queuing to escape. A mass evacuation is causing traffic jam issues. According to Olivana,“ Authorities are currently overseeing a mass evacuation of thousands fleeing the NSW south coast ahead of tomorrow's extreme fire danger. State governments and firefighters in NSW and Victoria are preparing for high temperatures, strong coastal winds and the possibility of dry thunderstorms creating particularly dangerous conditions [Olivana 2019]. Many have left Australia others might be now too late [John 2020].
In Australia, the driest inhabited continent on earth, cloud seeding has been carried out in various locations over some 47 years and is seen by some as a potential panacea to the devastating effects of drought. However, whilst the technology is not new, the reality is that there are only limited circumstances in which cloud seeding can be justified as an operational management investment. Research has shown that, given the appropriate conditions cloud seeding can modify clouds and induce rain. The dilemma for water managers is that the necessary favourable conditions occur relatively infrequently and the duration of the cloud seeding experiment necessary to demonstrate increased rainfall over a given area makes any experiment costly [Brian 1995].
Officials in many countries rely on cloud seeding that really does not work in bushfires [Jakarta 2019]. According to Quora, “Cloud seeding has never been used as a means to fight wildfires. If anything it would be used to alleviate drought conditions and thereby prevent wildfires but the process is expensive and controversial in the scientific community as to its effectiveness. While it has been proven to work it requires clouds to be present over the targeted area. Plus atmospheric conditions have to be just right and even then the amount of precipitation is often minimal and is typically concentrated in small areas. This would likely have little or no effect on extinguishment because the precipitation would evaporate from the extreme heat rising up from the fire.”
Rampant rise in GHG emissions cause climate change that drives global warming, ocean acidification and sea level rise. Differential heating of ocean and land create high energy temperature dipoles. Natural and human activities driven Indian Ocean Dipole and Pacific Ocean El Niño phenomena create severe drought conditions in Australia leading to wildfires and heatwaves [Bloomberg 2020].
Uncontrolled wildfires lift hot green gases, smoke and pollutants up in air, which cool and condense in troposphere. Wide swathes of bushfires cause “pyrocumulonimbus” clouds rich of carbon particles which sometimes fall back on land as black hails. These poisonous black hails are similar in nature to toxic black snow incidences in Siberia. History shows the pyrocumulonimbus thunderstorms bolster toxic downburst, black hails, dry lightning and fire tornados, which further spread the bushfires [Irena 2018].
Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) or creates drought in Australia that reinforces bushfires and the uncontrolled wildfires create their own weather system. Ferocious fires triggered pyrocumulonimbus causes downburst, black hails and dry lightning. Lightning, winds and embers further stimulates more fires to cause thermal runaway nightmare. Police rescues people and firefighters combat with flames to safeguard property, but wildlife is left to their fate during such pyro calamities [Jim 2019].
Australia is a land of opportunities and a natural habitat for wildlife. Bushfires fan polluted winds, power grid failures, life, and property losses. GHG emissions is a pyro calamity for public and wildlife. Hailstones, unlike sleet or other forms of water ice such as graupel, that is made of rime, and ice pellets, are smaller and translucent measuring between 5 mm (0.2 in) and 15 cm (6 in) in diameter. Precipitation in smoggy clouds may form black hails due to carbon black.
A downburst is an area of strong, downward moving air associated with a downdraft (opposite to updraft above fire) from a thunderstorm. When the downdraft hits the ground at high speed, the air is forced to spread outwards in all directions, causing extremely powerful and damaging winds. Meteorologist recommend to enter underpasses or stand under the large tree during downburst from fear of high pressure toxic gases. Micro and macro downbursts may cause 134 to 168 mph speed winds for 5 to 30 minutes which can damage trees and power lines in 1 to 10 miles areas. A strong updraft creates hails and rains which fall down dragging winds along at high speed. Large scale downburst is called derecho that involves hundreds of miles area. Severe downburst act like positive lightning discharge often called bolt from the blue. Dry lighting in Australia starts reinforce bushfires by starting new fires. Dry lighting makes fire spreading a self-sustained phenomenon called thermal runaway. Forecasts on dry lighting has started coming few days ago [SkyNews 2020].
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Dry lighting in Australia (6 January 2013, Waga Waga Australia)
Lightning is regarded as manifestation of nature. Lightning is a naturally occurring electrostatic discharge during which two electrically charged regions in the atmosphere or ground temporarily equalize themselves, causing the instantaneous release of as much as one gigajoule of energy. A dry lighting is produced by dry thunderstorm that produces thunder and lightning without rain as all the precipitation evaporates before reaching ground. Dry lightning due to forest fires may cause thermal runaway. Thermal runaway occurs in situations where an increase in temperature changes the conditions in a way that causes a further increase in temperature, often leading to a destructive result.
A similar lightning phenomenon is silent or heat lightning that occurs between clouds without sound. Heat lightning often occurs in summery during dry weather. Under optimum conditions, the most intense thunderstorms can be seen at up to 160 km over flat terrain or water when the clouds are illuminated by large lightning discharges. The movement of sound in the atmosphere depends on the properties of the air, such as temperature and density. The sound of thunder is refracted through the troposphere, or lowest dry layer of the atmosphere.
Russia and Australia are large producers of coal that is biggest culprit of climate change. Coal mining backfires on Russia and Australia in the form of black snow in winter and black hails during summer. Coal mining basin causes black snow in Siberia. Residents of Russian coal basin in Siberia live through industrial nightmare in winter. According to Peter, “Three separate cities within the coal-mining region of Kemerovo in southwest Siberia have been blanketed in a thick, black deluge of toxic snow, polluted by ever-present coal dust that pervades the atmosphere – and now the surface, too.” According to Vladimir Slivyak there is a lot of coal dust in the air all the time, it just becomes visible during snow falls, you can't see it the rest of the year, though it is still present there [Peter 2019].
Coal basin region is blanketed by black snow in winter in Siberia. Kuzbass’ coalfield stretches across 10,000 square mile. Siberian people living in the coal mining cities of Prokopyevsk, Kiselyovsk and Leninsk-Kuznetsky share photographs of the eerie winter landscape. One image reposted by the Siberian Times features blackened icicles dangling off of snow-covered branches [Meilan 2019].
Wildfires amid an intense heatwave has raised mercury above 40°C in almost every state. According to BBC, “About 30,000 residents and tourists were urged to flee East Gippsland - a popular holiday region - but evacuations were later deemed too risky as fires encroached on major roads.” [BBC 2019]. All major Australian regions like Darwin, Carin, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth suffer from uncontrolled bushfires. Australian fire fighters are combating abreast to wildfires, yet the wide swathes of fires are getting out of control. There used to be tales of “a house on fire” but never heard story of “a country on fire”. It is time to cap GHG emissions right now to avoid letting the planet on fire. [Saeed 2019].
Climate change is all about water. Shortage of water (drought) and abundance of water flash flood, glacier melt and sea level rise. Drought, heat wave and climate change cause Australia wildfires. Indian Ocean Dipole during its positive phase creates extreme drought in Australia and extreme rain in Africa. Severe drought results in local warming causing heat wave and bushfires. A similar phenomenon in Pacific Ocean, El Niño, creates heat wave during its positive phase and opposite phenomenon called La Niña causes cold wave. Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) phenomena creates extreme weathers on both sides in Australia and Africa. Extreme heat in summer and extreme chill in winter are vital signs of climate change.
Indian Ocean Dipole during positive phase causes drought in Australia and abundance in Africa. Drought leads to heat waves and bush fires in Australia and abundance to torrential rains in Africa. Wildfires and heatwaves cause air pollution, GHG emissions, causalities and property losses. Australia faces bushfires and heat waves, and Africa gets torrential rains. A devastating bushfire season started earlier than normal in southeast Australia and rains in east Africa.
“The common link is a strong positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), the counterpart to the El Niño weather system that develops in the Pacific Ocean.” In positive IOD phase (higher temperature) causes rains in Africa and drought in Australia whereas in negative IOD phase (lower temperature) causes drought in Africa and rains in Australia. According to Dr. Watkins, “Normally a positive Indian Ocean Dipole would die off at the end of November or start of December as the monsoon moves into the southern hemisphere.” [Irena 2019]. However superposition of positive IOD phase with El-Nino and negative IOD phase with La Nina, though rare, causes intense heat and cold waves in Australia. “El Niño is a part of a routine climate pattern that occurs when sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean rise to above-normal levels for an extended period of time.
The opposite of El Niño, La Niña, is when sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific drop to lower-than-normal levels.” El Niño, in Pacific Ocean, is warm phase of El Niño -Southern Oscillations (ENSO) that means a significant change of weather around the world, particularly in the United States. La Niña is a coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of hotter El Niño. The cool phase of ENSO is La Niña, air pressure is high in the eastern Pacific and low in the western Pacific. El Niño is accompanied by high air pressure in the western Pacific and low air pressure in the eastern Pacific. During warm phase of El Niño clouds develop from September to October. Words El Niño and La Niña mean boy and girl [Trenberth 2007]. La Niña causes cold snap and El Niño causes searing droughts, heat waves, wood fires, dry lighting and fire tornados (Firenados). A firenado happens when a tornado phenomenon meets any ground fire [Steve 2014]. A 30m tall firenado was recorded in Australia bushfire in 2012.
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A 100 feet Fire tornado (Firenado) in Australia [Grace 2012]
Wood is considered a natural source of energy. Burning wood releases carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxide, VOCs (volatile organic compounds), dioxins, furans, particulate matter and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. “Dioxins are a group of chemically-related compounds that are persistent environmental pollutants (POPs). Dioxins are found throughout the world in the environment and they accumulate in the food chain, mainly in the fatty tissue of animals.”
“Furan is a heterocyclic organic compound, consisting of a five-membered aromatic ring with four carbon atoms and one oxygen. Chemical compounds containing such rings are also referred to as furans. Furan is a colorless, flammable, highly volatile liquid with a boiling point close to room temperature.” Bushfires release pollutants and green gases. Australian bushfires have released green gases equal to half of their annual GHG emissions. Climate change, heat waves, wildfires, cloudless rains, black hail and dry lightning events cause a havoc in global warming hit places like Australia and Brazil.
According to Heesu, “Fires blighting New South Wales and Queensland have emitted a combined 306 million tons of carbon dioxide since Aug. 1, which is more than half of Australia’s total greenhouse gas footprint last year. NASA estimate it to be more than 270 million tons in just over four months of bushfires. Destructive blazes have erupted in 2019 from the Arctic to the Amazon and Indonesia in what scientists are calling an exceptional year for wildfires… Northern New South Wales and southern Queensland are experiencing record-breaking dryness, and very low levels of soil moisture threatens to slash national summer crop output for a second year by 52% to 1.24 million tons.” [Heesu 2019].
The bushfires are common in Australia, Ash Wednesday (75 fatalities on 208,000 hectares) and Black Saturday (173 fatalities on 450,000 hectares) bushfires, but climate change has increased their frequency in last three decades. Bushfires 2019 have burnt 829 homes in 5 million hectares area. According to SGRSP Report 2008, there are on average 54,000 (46,000-62,000) bushfires per year in Australia. A bushfire during intense heat wave affects more severely than normal weather days.
Common causes of bushfires include lightning, arcing from overhead power lines, arson, accidental ignition in the course of agricultural clearing, grinding and welding activities, campfires, cigarettes and dropped matches, sparks from machinery, and controlled burn escapes etc. Bushfire incidences cause life and property losses in affected areas. Fire incidences are common in southeast, north and southwest in Australia. In southeast Australia, bushfires tend to be most common and most severe during summer and autumn (December–March), in drought years, and particularly severe in El Niño years. Australia, however, seems to be affected by both El-Nino and Indian Ocean dipole effects [Sullivan 2009].
Southeast Australia is fire-prone, and warm and dry conditions intensify the probability of fire. In northern Australia, bushfires usually occur during the dry season (April to September), and fire severity tends to be more associated with seasonal weather patterns [Burarra 2010]. In the southwest, similarly, bushfires occur in the summer dry season and severity is usually related to seasonal growth. Fire frequency in the north is difficult to assess, as the vast majority of fires are caused by human activities or lightning strikes.
A cold wave has frozen South Asia on Christmas 2019. In Pakistan, temperatures plummeted down to 9°C in Karachi, 6°C in Lahore, 1°C in Islamabad, -10°C in Swat and -16°C in Skurdu. This cold wave was caused by Siberian winds in Pakistan. Biting cold wave has caused respiratory infections, rush of customers was seen at chicken soup, fish and carrot halwa outlets to beat the cold weather. Cold waves come in Pakistan during winter months by Siberian Winds at 30-55km/h speeds [News 2018].
Chilly Siberian winds first come from Quetta to Karachi then spread in plain regions throughout the country. Siberian winds cause cold wave in Pakistan from December to January for one week [Staff 2019]. Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) forecast cold wave in last week of November 2019 that continued to end of December 2019 [PMD 2019]. Lahore experiences smog in November and dense fog from December to January 2019. Karachi and Lahore experience heat waves in June and July every year. The intensities of cold and heat waves are increasing with passage of time.
According to BBC, “A "mega blaze" raging across a 60km (37 mile) front north-west of Sydney cannot currently be put out, Australian fire officials have warned. The fire across almost 300,000 hectares (1,150 sq miles) is an hour's drive from the nation's most-populous city. People who cannot defend their property from approaching fires have been told they should leave immediately.” [BBC 2019]. Researchers believe each year wildfires destroy 6 to 14 million hectares of forests worldwide. The impacts of fires are devastating to human communities and forest ecosystem. Zillions of animals are burnt alive in large scale wildfires. It is time to fix the future by learning how to avoid the past [Peter 2003].
The World Conservation Union (IUCN), The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) suggest supporting research to improve the understanding of forest fires and their ecology, ecological and social costs and benefits, causes and management options. Building awareness amongst policy-makers, the public and the media of the underlying causes of catastrophic forest fires. Mandating and equipping managers to implement integrated fire management programs. Involving local communities and land managers in management planning and implementation, assisting them to participate effectively.
Discouraging land management practices that predispose forests to harmful fires. Promoting management strategies to mimic natural fire regimes, including techniques such as prescribed burns and managed wildfires. Avoiding manipulating natural or well-established fire regimes. Establishing reliable fire monitoring systems that provide early warning of high fire risk and fire occurrence, and include evaluation of ecological and human impacts of fire.
Australia’s 87% wildlife is endemic to the country, which means it can be found only on this island continent. Species, like the koala, the southern brown bandicoot and the long-footed potoroo, have populations living in the regions now being obliterated by the fires. Because the fires this season have been so intense and consumed wetlands as well as dry eucalyptus forests. The fires are blazing ferociously along Australia’s eastern coast, as well as South Australia, Tasmania and parts of Western Australia.
When Saddam Hussain put Kuwaiti oil wells on fire these continued burning oil for several days. Nuclear, chemical and electric fires need different strategies. Precaution, early warning system using IoT devices and quick response are the best policies. Once the fire has gone out of control the artificial rain may play role well if it is possible over the flames. Public is requested to pray for Australia and climate experts are requested to advise remedial measures how to control fire leading to thermal runaway.
“Since the start of the bushfire season in September, an estimated 25.5 million acres have burned, according to Reuters, and at least 25 people have died. More than 1 billion animals have perished, and an estimated 2,000 homes have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate. Australia experiences fires during its summer, which runs from December to March, but this year's crisis — which comes on the heels of a heat wave and prolonged drought — is unprecedented. The fires that plagued the Brazilian Amazon this year, by comparison, burned through 17.5 million acres of rainforest. The smoke plume from Australia's blazes is nearly unfathomable in size: 1.3 billion acres of sky are engulfed in ash and smoke that can be seen from the space too. Drought conditions and record-breaking temperatures contributed to the fires' unprecedented size and intensity. Dry conditions in Australia's bush land, wooded areas, and Blue Mountain National Park have made the land ripe for sparks. Australia experienced its driest spring ever in 2019.
The Guardian’s bushfire inferno scene in Australia
Dry conditions in Australia's bush land, wooded areas, and Blue Mountain National Park have made the land ripe for sparks. Australia experienced its driest spring ever in 2019. Australians used to see hundreds of thousands of hectares burned in bushfires, but now they are seeing millions on fire.” [Kelly 2020]. Australia's forests were thought to reabsorb all the carbon released in bushfires, meaning they achieved net zero emissions, but scientists say climate change is making bushfires burn more intensely and frequently. These fires have emitted 66% (350 million) of Australian carbon emissions [Mike 2020]. Emergency declared, military called for help, and people of tens of towns were asked to leave homes. Air quality index of affected areas exceed standard limits due to smoke-drenched apocalyptic nightmare. Australian neph pollution (nephelometer reading) reached 509x10-4 m-1 around fire affected areas. Unlike California and Brazil, where most fires are sparked by human activities, Australia's fires are believed to be started primarily by natural occurrences like lightning. Once fires reach to uncontrolled level, the dry lightning further spreads the fires.
Experts hold the cloud seeding technology does not work during uncontrolled bushfires. Fire fighters use control line, burning out, backburn, flanking, hot spotting, knock down, cold trailing and aerial attack techniques to control the uncontrolled fires. Fire fighters throw water and fire chemical retardants, containing phosphate fertilizers, by air tankers to douse the wildfires. Nature normally starts making clouds on hard hit region to putdown wild fires.
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