"Friends. Shit is getting well-serious. I am at my place at the very top of the Bellinger Valley. Smoke has completely saturated everything for days now. "Most of this evening I have heard the wind absolutely roaring on the escarpment above. These beasts are inexorably heading for Point Lookout and New England National Park — the biggest and healthiest chunk of Gondwana. "There are no words that can describe the significance, enormity and horror of what now looks highly likely to happen … Rain, RAIN … RAIN …" Mark Graham, Ecologist and fire specialist
Gondwana was a supercontinent that existed five hundred and fifty million years ago. In the early years of the Jurassic period one hundred and eighty years million years ago is when the supercontinent broke up. Most of today’s landmass that was part of Gondwana, are now known as India, South America, Australia, Antarctica, Africa, Arabia, and Madagascar.
Gondwana rainforests in Australia are recognized as the largest sub-tropical rainforests on earth by the World Heritage Foundation. The rainforest remnants in Australia are mainly in Queensland and New South Wales. Antarctic temperate beech rainforests provide proof that the fossil record of Australia was a part of the supercontinent. It is one of a few remnants of ancient forests in the world and includes plants and animals that have survived since ancient times.
Australia’s eucalyptus forests use fire to regenerate. But the soaking wet moss-covered rainforest has never burned.
For many species, if they experience wildfire, they will die, so they evolved to live at higher elevations where it is way too wet to burn, until now.
An extreme drought with blistering heat in winter and spring has turned parts of the forest and bogs into tinder. The forests have begun to burn.
Unlike the Amazon, where the genocidal maniac Jair Bolsonaro is burning the rainforest, in Gondwana, forests burn because of climate change.
Bushfires are normally considered to be "carbon neutral" because, unlike fossil fuels, their emissions output is reabsorbed when the vegetation in fire-affected areas regrows.
However, experts fear the sheer scale and intensity of this year's unprecedented fires, coupled with worsening drought conditions, has disrupted this recovery process.
Flames have reached heights of 229 feet.
xVideo footage shows a bushfire moving from treetop to treetop in a phenomenon known as ‘crowning,’ in Australia’s Blue Mountains pic.twitter.com/VSwAww0quT
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 15, 2019
x xYouTube VideoDr Canadell said it was difficult to determine if specific fires would be carbon neutral because the regrowth process could take a long time.
But he said decreased rainfall and a lack of remediation of the land degraded by flames and agriculture meant some of the millions of tonnes of carbons from this year's bushfires would remain in the atmosphere.
"If there were no changes in fire frequency over time, it would be carbon neutral," he said.
"[But] carbon neutrality breaks at the point where you start burning more than regrowth can catch up with."
Professor Bowman said we may already have entered a "slippery slope of negative feedback" where forests become sources of carbon instead of carbon sinks.
"The nightmare scenario is that because of climate change, the forest isn't able to recover itself," he said.
"Once we actually know for certain what's happening, it's going to be too late.
"And this is a big thing to be wrong about."
ABC news reports on the trauma that Aussies are experiencing.
Beekeepers checking on hives are some of the first people into fire-ravaged forests, and are not prepared for the traumatic sights and sounds of wounded and suffering animals.NSW Apiarists Association president Stephen Targett said the situation in north-eastern NSW was "truly devastating" to beekeepers and extremely traumatic.
"It's doing their heads in, the screaming animals, the animals that are in pain, that are crying out in the forest, it's absolutely horrific," Mr Targett said.
"One beekeeper employs some young people and it has really traumatised them.
"So the beekeeper has arranged counselling for these young beekeepers who went into the forest and he won't allow them back into the forest for a period of time.
The Courier Mail writes that the island continent will experience 50C, or 122 degrees F, temperatures in the coming weeks.
There will be no mercy for the weary anytime soon.
Australia could set a new record next week for the country’s hottest day ever.
The Bureau of Meteorology has warned that an unprecedented heatwave in Western Australia could make its way east and bring searing temperatures across southern Australia over the next week or so.
BOM meteorologist Diana Eadie said there had been extraordinary temperatures across WA in the last few days and this would continue over the weekend.
The high temperatures will shift eastwards and will intensify towards the end of the week.
“We’re likely to see a broad part of the country experiencing temperatures in excess of 45 degrees from Wednesday onwards,” Ms Eadie said.
Graham Readfearn writes in The Guardian that a quarter of Eucalypt species are threatened with extinction.
A global assessment of all 826 known species of eucalypt trees – of which some 812 grow only in Australia – has found almost a quarter are threatened with extinction.
The figures are revealed in the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s update of its “red list” of threatened species.
Eucalypts in their native range of Australia faced threats from human land use, especially agriculture and urbanisation, the IUCN said.
“As keystone species, [eucalypts] define the landscape of the entire Australian continent, and are culturally significant to its First Nations people,” the IUCN said.
“It’s not just individual eucalypt species at risk. Entire forest ecosystems dominated by eucalypts are endangered. Some have been cleared down to less than 10% - or even 5% - of their original extent.”
He said that Australia only listed 76 eucalypts as threatened, while IUCN listed 198, which suggested “the federal government should urgently re-assess the plight of these iconic trees”.
Meanwhile, Flying Foxes have abandoned their young. From Reuters:
MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Thousands of baby grey-headed flying foxes have been abandoned by their mothers in the latest example of wildlife devastation caused by Australia’s severe drought and bushfires, which disrupted the bats’ ability to produce milk for their offspring.
A threatened species, the grey-headed flying fox is one of the world’s largest bats, with a wingspan of up to a meter, and is covered in dark grey fur with an orange collar.
“We have lost about 90 in the last three weeks,” said Hugh Pitty, an ecologist who monitors a breeding colony that forms each year from November to May in the east coast town of Bega.
“The young ones have been abandoned by their mums, who don’t have enough nourishment to produce any milk,” he said, adding that drought had caused the food shortage, which was then exacerbated by the fires.
Sydney's drinking water could be polluted by bushfire ash in Warragamba Dam catchment, expert says
xSydney’s drinking water supply is at risk of the same “worst-case scenario” facing some New South Wales regional communities, where large amounts of bushfire ash has been swept into dams by heavy rainfall, a water expert has warned.
Stuart Khan, a water quality security expert and environmental engineer from the University of NSW, said recent bushfires had left large deposits of ash in the Warragamba Dam catchment, which supplies 80% of the city’s drinking water.
Take a swim in the charcoal, kids - Sydney beach today (Malabar) #NSWfires#ClimateChange#AustraliaFirespic.twitter.com/Q5OlLGvhQ0
— Bill Code (@billcode) December 7, 2019
“The situation in Sydney is really serious,” Khan said. “Having a reservoir full of soil and sediment and ash is in itself a real problem, because it makes water treatment processes more difficult.
“There will be a huge amount of ash sitting in the catchment now. The best case is we get gentle rainfall for weeks and months that allows some gentle regrowth. If we have a big storm or a big wet weather event in Sydney’s drinking water catchment, we will see some of that ash running into the dam.”
Powerful and brutal takedown of PM and climate criminal, Scott Morrison.
xAs firefighters and their families enter another long week of battling catastrophic bushfires, exhaustion and frustration is starting to boil over.This week, one woman put her thoughts in a blog post that’s since gone viral - her message aimed squarely at our Prime Minister. pic.twitter.com/ECnyTVm2FE
— The Project (@theprojecttv) December 15, 2019