Scientists have warned bushfires ravaging Australia have provided a foretaste of the kinds of conditions that could become normal unless the world moves rapidly to curb emissions of the greenhouse gases driving global warming.
Although Australia’s conservative Liberal-National government and parts of its media have attempted to downplay the role of human-made climate change in making the country more vulnerable to bushfires, a review of 57 scientific papers published since 2013 suggested clear links.
“We’re not going to reverse climate change on any conceivable timescale,” Professor Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts Research at Britain’s Met Office Hadley Centre, who co-authored the review, told a news conference in London reported by Reuters Newsagency.
“So, the conditions that are happening now, they won’t go away,” he added.
The review found that climate change had led to an increase in the frequency and severity of what scientists call “fire weather”, periods with a high fire risk due to some combination of hotter temperatures, low humidity, low rainfall and strong winds.
The effects had not only been observed in Australia, but from the western United States and Canada, to southern Europe, Scandinavia, the Amazon and Siberia, the review found.
Globally, fire weather seasons have lengthened across about 25 per cent of the Earth’s vegetated surface, resulting in about a 20 per cent increase in the mean length of the fire weather season, according to observational data Reuters reported.
Professor Betts said Australia was particularly vulnerable to fires since its land area had warmed by more than the rise in average global temperature of about one degree Celsius since pre-industrial times.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said the global temperature increase could hit 3.0°C to 5.0°C this century, more than three times limits agreed in the 2015 United Nations sponsored Paris Climate Agreement, if nothing is done to stop rising emissions.
“Temperature conditions in Australia are extreme at the moment but they are what we expect to happen on average in a world of three degrees of global warming,” Professor Betts said.
“It brings it home to you what climate change means.”
The review was carried out using https://sciencebrief.org, a new online research platform set up by Britain’s University of East Anglia and Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
Reuters reports at least 28 people have been killed in the Australian fires that have destroyed 2000 homes and razed 11.2 million hectares, nearly half the area of the United Kingdom.
After weeks of criticism over his handling of the crisis, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday he would propose a high-powered inquiry into the disaster, including the impact of climate change.
At the same time the Victorian state Labor government has announced a two-year inquiry into the bushfire crisis, ahead of the mooted federal government’s Royal Commission which has met resistance from some states.
Today the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, announced the inspector-general of emergency management, Tony Pearce, would receive $2.55m for extra staff to review recent bushfires in the state, including in the Gippsland region and the dramatic evacuation of the coastal town of Mallacoota.
The inquiry will report by mid 2020 on preparedness and firefighting efforts, ahead of the next fire season, with a second report on relief and recovery due in 2021.
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The protection of forest ecosystems and environment and heritage must be a top priority of Austrelian Gov. They must take some strong decisions.