Australia Is On Fire: Here Is All That You Need To Know

Australia is getting hot so often at such an unprecedented level that they are triggering their own thunderstorms. The whole country's wildlife is likely to collapse to fire. Extreme devastating conditions like this would jeopardize both humans and wildlife. Hence, here is a detailed analysis of all the basics that you need to know, about the Australian bushfire.

Origin of bushfire 

Early kick-off of the fire season started in the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales [NSW] in September 2019 and continued into early 2020. The whole continent welcomes the new decade while having a fire in his heart. Here is one the viral tweet of the New Year eve “My last day of the decade felt like an apocalypse”.

 A prolonged drought that begins in 2017 made this year’s bushfire season more devastating than ever. NSW is one of the more damaging states that even declared the State Of Emergency.  

Conditions like this are not new in Australia rather it is better to say, that now it is far more frequent as compared to earlier years. The Bureau of Meteorology had to add brand new color contour on their map to express the extreme increase in the level of temperature with that particular shade, back in 2013.

The area affected by the fire. 

source global news

Fires are raging in every state, with some of the greatest conflagrations in NSW and Victoria. The total area that’s been torched is rapidly approaching 18 million hectares of land. If we compare this wildfire season of Australia with the recent fire experience of Amazon and California. Here are the following statistics. It is estimated that over 7 million hectares of forest within the Amazon have been lost to fires in 2019. While in California 105,147 hectares the land lost to wildfire in 2019. Hence, land burnt in Australia is almost ten times the amount of burnt area in amazon and about three times the amount burnt in California’s wildfire.
The land burnt in Australia is equivalent to 2 times of Bihar state of India as it is around 10 million hectares of land.

What damage is caused to civilians and wildlife?

Since, the start of the bushfire season in September, an estimated at least 28 people lost their life. An estimated hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate. More than 2000 homes have been destroyed. 

The total economic damage caused by the Australia wildfires from September 2019 till early 2020 will be around $4.4 billion as estimated by Moody's Analytics.

An estimated 1 billion animals were killed. Many wildlife animals and some farm animals have been killed directly by the flames. Australian biodiversity currently facing one of the major crises for its sustainable growth. It can be understood by the current study of the University of Sydney, that provided with the explained statistics of approx. 480 million death, considering NSW only. However, other experts believe the actual loss is far greater than this.

 Here are solid reasons to believe it too.

1. It considers NSW alone, while the bushfire spread to the state of Victoria and other states also.
2. The study includes mammals, birds, and reptiles but does do not include insects, bats, and frogs.

Regardless of the exact numerical figures, this is the crisis for Australian biodiversity because many animals might survive the flames but will likely die late due to lack of food, water, and shelter. Hence, this all will have a greater impact on the flora and fauna of the area. Which in return disturb the food chain.

Australia is one of those rare continents which have 244 species of mammals of which about 34 species have become extinct over the last 200 years.  This is the highest rate of extinction for any region in the world.

An estimated 8000 koalas have died in the bushfire, that make up to 30% of the koalas' population in NSW. The current loss of Australian animal life is a serious tragedy by any one’s count.

How the world has responded to the crisis?

Politicians and climate change activists around the globe have shown a great concern at the unfolding Australian bushfire crisis. Countries like the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea continuously coming forward for the recuse in hours of need.

What is the connection with climate change? 

Bushfire in Australia is not a new issue it happens regularly to provide balance to the natural process of vegetation. A most common place where occurrences of bushfire are high is California, amazon, Australia, and many more where there is plenty of wood, plant or forest that can be burn. Wildfire is important for some species of plant to successfully reproduce and release their seeds. Most eucalypts area starts to recover after one month of fire. Typically new leaves start to sprout from the burnt trees.

What is worse is the rise in the frequency of wildfires over a while. Australia constantly experiencing the average rise in temperature. Australia's area-averaged mean temperature for 2019 was 1.52 °C above that of 1961–1990 average, well above the old record: +1.33 °C in 2013. The world is facing an average increase of 0.8°C while this average increase is worse for Australia that is around 1.4°C. Widespread drought and warmth throughout the year along with 40% below-average rainfall is the major reason behind the current crisis. Some of the experts consider neutral El Niño–Southern Oscillation as one of the many reasons mentioned above.


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Conclusion

The problem is that they have very few places climate-wise that are forested and that are different from the rest of the country. That is exactly what is on fire it’s going to take a long time for that to come back. Along with that, it is really important to understand either it is a fire in your country or in another country the impact it will have on the whole climate will be disastrous that will bite all globe one or the other day.