The Lesson Of The Fire

Hello Everyone:

It is a lovely Tuesday afternoon and there is more fall out from the Sanders-Warren scandal.  It should be fascinating to see what happens in tonight's candidate debate, the last one before the Iowa Caucus, when CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer poses the question to candidates Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).  Right now, Blogger has other things on her mind, like the mega-fires in Australia and its parallels for California.

Image from Australia
vox.com

The apocalyptic images coming out of the sub-continent of Australia are horrific, to the say very least.  Wildlife experts estimate that about 1 million species of animals, unique to Australia, are on the verge of extinction.  Homes have been reduced to ashes, forest blackened, and it is hard not think about the wild fires that have plagued California, especially the ones in Northern California in 2017, the Paradise Fires in 2018, and the recent Kincade fire.  There is this shared feeling helplessness and a dizzying lack of control over one's environment.  Even more disorienting is the lack of recognition of the mighty fires and their power to turn cars into rivers of melted aluminum and consume over 15 million acres in Australia (nytimes.com; Jan. 9, 2020; date access Jan 14, 2020).  The parallel in terms of destruction are evident and it is important to first take a look at the causes, then look at what are the lessons for California.

A view of the Australian fires from outer space
businessinsider.com

Over the past summer, Australian state and territory has been effected by fire.  However, the largest fires are burning along the stretches of the populated eastern and southern coast (bbc.com; Jan. 13, 2020; date accessed Jan. 14, 2020).  The affected areas include Sydney and Adelaide.  To give you an idea how big the 15 million acre fire is, check out the image on the left-hand side.  The area in red is where the fires are.  That is how engulfing the fires are.  The American space agency NASA believes that the haze will encircle the earth.  How did the fires.

The fire is the size of Manhattan, New York
cnn.com

 Australia is no stranger to bush fires--it has a "fire season" (Ibid).  However, this year fire season is more intense.  The fires are typically caused by lightening strikes or accidentally by a spark--some are also deliberately set (bbc.co.uk; Nov. 14, 2019; date accessed Jan. 20, 2020).  Some have pointed to climate change are exacerbating the fires.

Australia's fire season usually peaks in late January (sciencenews.org; Jan. 9, 2020; date accessed  Jan. 14, 2020) but as of right now, the wildfires have raged through the country, in particular the eastern side, for the past four months.  The wildfires are being fueled by a mix of record high temperatures, long-term drought, dangerously low air and soil moisture entering the normal fire season, and human negligence (Ibid).  Scientists also point to climate change as a cause of "extreme, deadly blazes three times as common by the end of the century" (Ibid).

Identifying climate change's footprints in the mega-fires is difficult.  For years, Australian fire managers have kept an eye on the one culprit behind the unusually hot dry years in the east and may be impacted by global warming: "...an oscillating El Nino-like ocean-atmosphere weather pattern that begins in the Indian Ocean" (Ibid).

El Nino southern oscillation
phys.org

 Similar to El Nino, the "Indian Ocean dipole" (Ibid) pattern has three phases: positive, negative, and neutral (Ibid), depending on whether the eastern or western Indian Ocean waters are warmer.  The more extreme difference between the regions, the stronger the phases. 

Melbourne-based scientist Wenju Cai of CSIRO explained, "When the Indian Ocean dipole is in a particularly strong positive phase--as it was in 2019--it correlates to some of Australia's worst fire seasons,...Global warming is likely to make such extreme positive phases much more common [nature.com; date accessed Jan. 14, 2020]"(Ibid).  Mr. Cai and his colleagues conducted a 2014 study in Nature, in which they simulated future sea-surface temperature fluctuations in the Indian Ocean in a world where greenhouse gas emissions continued as usual (sciencenews.org; Jan. 7, 2020; date accessed  Jan. 14, 2020).  The scientists found that if GHE continued business-as-usual, "the frequency of extreme positive-phase event could increase from about once every 17 years to about once every six years" (Ibid; Jan. 9, 2020).  For California, an El Nino event can mean a lot of rain, especially in the southern part of the state.  Great, you think, but not for fire affected areas like Paradise and Kincade because all the vegetation has been burned away causing landslides.

The ironically named Camp Fire (2018)
Paradise, California
theguardian.com

Both Australian and California have similar terrain.  The sub-continent is in the midst of a prolonged drought that resembles the five-year drought that California experienced until 2017, still dictating land and water use (sfchronicle.com; Jan. 10, 2020; date accessed Jan. 14, 2020).  Not only do they experience dry summers but the dry periods are lasting longer than they used to, exposing expanses of parched bushes, chaparral, and woodlands.  A contingent of 159 U.S. Forest, including 39 from California, Service are part of the army of Australian firefighters and army reservists detailed to the fire.  LeRoy Westerling, a climate and fire scientist at UC Merced told the San Francisco Chronicle,

What we're watching is how accelerating climate change is transforming the the landscape around us and is, in turn, driving the death of millions of animals and shifting the ecosystems,... And it is not a none-off.  This is just one more exclamation point.  We keep thinking, 'Well, it can't worse than this,' but it just keeps getting worse'  (Ibid).

As tempting as it is to compare it to California, you have to keep in mind that Australia is much larger, nearly the size of the continental U.S,. and the fires there consume a huge area.  Here is a fascinating statistic for your: the devastating 2018 fires, the largest fire in the state's history, burned 2 million acres.  The Amazon Rain Forest fires devoured 2.2 million acres; the out-of-control wildfires in Siberia in 2019 destroyed 6.7 million acres (Ibid).  Can anything be done?

There are preventative measures that fire-prone places like California can take to catastrophic fires.  The most popular measure is controlled burns.  This is the most basic forest management practice.  A controlled burn is a deliberately set fire that gets rid of excess vegetation that could fuel a fire.  Once routinely used by farmers, now comes with a fine.  Opposition to controlled burns has largely undercut Australia's ability to prevent wildfires and the United States, the issue is mainly a lack of forest management (thehill.com; date accessed Jan. 14, 2020).  This has been a serious challenge for California and the federal government, which are embracing private solutions.

One private solution is the Forest Resilience Bond (forestresiliencebond.com; date accessed Jan. 14, 2020) developed by the Blue Forest Conservation and the World Resource Institute.  An FRB is a financial tool that raises private capitol from investors to fund desperately needed forest restoration work (thehill.com; date accessed Jan. 14, 2020).  Currently it is conducting a pilot program in California's Tahoe National Forest, with private investors covering the immediate costs.  The investors will recoup their cost over time by stakeholders who will benefit from avoiding catastrophic fires.

Controlled burns are one way to prevent the kind of apocalyptic fires Australia is experiencing right now.  Dealing with climate change is largely a matter of changing human behavior.  Regardless, the environmental clock is ticking and we must take action now.