Production: Pablo Cantudo
Australia is on fire. It is not the first time in recent months that we have witnessed such aggressive and prolonged forest fires in some region of our planet.
Australia’s situation is alarming, especially for its wildlife: the koala population is declining dramatically. The number of dead animals could be as high as one billion.
In addition, 26 people have died and 5 million hectares burned since the fires began in September.
And, as always, there is a lot of misinformation on social media. Why is Australia burning? Have the fires been started? What role does climate change play in this serious situation?
Australia has a size of 7 million eight hundred thousand square kilometers of total area, of which 17 percent is forest. This means that most of Australia is a large desert.
To get an idea, the surface of Spain, in comparison, is only seven hundred and seventy-two thousand kilometers, and its forests represent 36%.
Still, given its enormous size, Australia’s forest area is equivalent to about 3% of the world’s forest area.
Fires in Australia are common. What is concerning about the fires of recent months is that they are much longer and more aggressive than normal, making this fire season one of the worst in its history.
For example, throughout 2019 ten million hectares were burned , while in the same period of time, in 2009, less than half were burned.
The fires are getting more serious and lasting. But why? On January 2, the MIT Technology Review magazine published an article in which it explained what are the climatic factors that cause fires in Australia.
Last year was Australia’s hottest and driest, setting all-time temperature records under scorching heat waves.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology warns that there are now a greater number of days with very high fire hazards in this region of the planet. Extreme heat events are becoming more common and droughts are becoming more severe, creating a perfect setting for fires to break out.
In recent decades, there has been a decrease in rainfall in spring , which makes the fire season longer. This translates into more opportunities for fires to break out.
What can we conclude from these data? Everything points, according to scientists, that the blame for the intensity of the fires in Australia is climate change. And it is not something new. For years, researchers have warned that climate change could aggravate climate emergencies, including forest fires.
