Though temperatures have cooled somewhat in Australia, providing much-needed relief for the overworked and exhausted firefighters, provides some critical time to strengthen containment lines the firestorms have not stopped. They are predicted to intensify in the next few days as yet another heatwave will desiccate the soils, plants, and trees of Australia to tinder.
Many scientists now believe some of the planets forests may never recover. If the forests somehow can defy all odds in an increasingly warming world, it still may take burned forests around the globe decades to recover. Those are decades that we don’t have to save ourselves from the worst impacts of the climate crisis.
Bob Berwyn writes in Inside Climate News.
As extreme wildfires burn across large swaths of Australia, scientists say we're witnessing how global warming can push forest ecosystems past a point of no return.
Some of those forests won't recover in today's warmer climate, scientists say. They expect the same in other regions scarred by flames in recent years; in semi-arid areas like parts of the American West, the Mediterranean Basin and Australia, some post-fire forest landscapes will shift to brush or grassland.
More than 17 millionacres have burned in Australia over the last three months amid record heat that has dried vegetation and pulled moisture from the land. Hundreds of millions of animals, including a large number of koalas, are believed to have perished in the infernos. The survivors will face drastically changed habitats. Water flows and vegetation will change, and carbon emissions will rise as burning trees release carbon and fewer living trees are left to pull CO2 out of the air and store it.
In many ways, it's the definition of a tipping point, as ecosystems transform from one type into another.
The surge of large, destructive forest fires from the Arctic to the tropics just in the last few years has shocked even researchers who focus on forests and fires and who have warned of such tipping points for years.
The projections were seen as remote, "something that would happen much farther in the future," said University of Arizona climate scientist David Breashers. "But it's happening now. Nobody saw it coming this soon, even though it was like a freight train.
"It's likely the forests won't be coming back as we know them."
Mind-blowing view of explosive wildfires in southeast Australia on Saturday. Rampant pyrocumulus forming within the smoke plumes. pic.twitter.com/McKwtH55y3
— Dakota Smith (@weatherdak) January 4, 2020
Tara Law writes in Time Magazine
The Australian bushfires were exacerbated by two factors that have a “well-established” link to climate change: heat and dry conditions, says Stefan Rahmstorf, department head at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and a lead author of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report.
In recent years, Australia has experienced long-term dry conditions and exceptionally low rainfall. Scientists say that droughts in the country have gotten worse over recent decades. At the same time, the country has recorded record high temperatures; last summer was the hottest on record for the country.
“Due to enhanced evaporation in warmer temperatures, the vegetation and the soils dry out more quickly,” says Rahmstorf. “So even if the rainfall didn’t change, just the warming in itself would already cause a drying of vegetation and therefore increased fire risk.”
Australia: you have just experienced the future. pic.twitter.com/5H0ab4tMzJ
— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) January 6, 2020
More than 1 billion animals may have been killed directly or indirectly from the fires in Australia but the full extent of damage is still unknown. Read the latest and find out how you can help: https://t.co/qjwXFPHV1upic.twitter.com/zm7CYlNEI6
— World Wildlife Fund (@World_Wildlife) January 8, 2020
Professor Chris Dickman at the University of Sydney has revised his estimate on the number of animals killed by the unprecedented wildfires from 500 million to well over 1.25 billion animals. Even this number is low because it does not include insects.
And some habitats will take a long time to return. The green carpenter bee makes its nests using the dead flowering stalks of grass trees, which take several years to regrow following fire, and in the trunks of large, dead Banksia trees, which won’t be back for decades. The glossy black cockatoo faces a similar housing crisis because it relies on large tree hollows for nesting. It can take decades before trees are large enough for these hollows to begin forming naturally, Woinarski said.
In many places, recolonization by native vegetation will be slowed by the size of the burn area.
“There will be seeds in the soil that regenerate,” Hughes said. “But a lot of regeneration relies on seeds being dispersed in from outside. And when you get a really enormous extent of fire, that will slow down.”
“Over a broad scale, it’ll take many many decades for species to recover,” Woinarski said. “If at all.”
Tens of Thousands of Knitters are Stitching Pouches and Mittens for Animals Burned in Australian Bushfires https://t.co/yXKaUXlQTD
— Susie Robinson (@SusieRobinson14) January 9, 2020Some species might not make it through. Saunders felt that extinction is a “quite likely possibility” for some of the vulnerable and hart-hit species. Hughes agreed. “I think we’d be very surprised if we haven’t lost some rare species since the new year,” she said.
If the 2019-2020 bushfire season were a once-in-a-century event, then perhaps most of Australia’s wild places would eventually rebound. What concerns many scientists is that fires seasons like it could become the new normal. And if that’s the case, there’s no telling what Australia’s ecological future looks like.
“What I’m scared of is that these current fires are a harbinger of the future,” Woinarksi said. “And that future is really bleak.”
It’s not just wildfire that is killing animals. It is also the intense heat waves. Though temperatures have cooled somewhat recently, the next couple of days will bring yet another brutal heatwave.
�You�re looking down at them and they�re looking up at you gasping," says photojournalist Doug Gimesy. "It�s like a war zone." https://t.co/FvAWbbPdYo
— National Geographic (@NatGeo) January 8, 2020
Yale Environment 360 also writes on the horrific loss of life and notes that 800 million animals have been killed in New South Wales alone.
YouTube VideoScientists estimate that as many as 1 billion animals have died in Australia’s record-breaking wildfires, with more than 800 million lost in New South Wales alone. The fires, which started in September following prolonged drought and high temperatures, have burned nearly 20 million acres so far, killing 25 people and destroying thousands of homes. Scientists warn the blazes could continue for several more months.
These are dead animals by the road side in Australia! 24 people dead, 500M animals dead, Over 5.5 million hectares burned (more than 2 times the size of Rwanda), More than 1400 homes destroyed. Pray for Australians & their wildlife! #AustralianBushfirepic.twitter.com/Wey3WKqf55
— King MelvinâÂ�¢ (@melvin_nasasira) January 6, 2020The animal mortality estimate was calculated by ecologists at the University of Sydney and includes mammals (excluding bats), birds, and reptiles, CBS News reported. It does not include frogs, insects, other invertebrates, or livestock. The World Wildlife Fund Australia estimates as many as 1.25 billion animals have been lost in the fires, including koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, gliders, potoroos, cockatoos, and honeyeaters. The organization said in a statement that several species “may have tipped over the brink of extinction.”
“I think there’s nothing quite to compare with the devastation that’s going on over such a large area so quickly,” University of Sydney ecologist Chris Dickman, who led the calculation, told CBS News. “It’s a monstrous event in terms of geography and the number of individual animals affected.”
Wednesday, Jan 8, 2020 · 8:55:51 PM +00:00 · Pakalolo