<
https://theconversation.com/of-ice-and-fire-what-sea-salt-in-antarctic-snowfall-reveals-about-bushfires-worse-than-the-black-summer-230982>
"Australia has a long history of bushfires. The 2019-2020 Black Summer was the
worst in recorded history. But was that the worst it could get?
Our new research has reconstructed the past 2,000 years of southeast
Australia’s bushfire weather, drawing on evidence of past climates laid down in
changing patterns in deep ice in East Antarctica. The high and low pressure
weather systems south of Australia are so large they connect the two
continents, even though they are more than 3,000 km apart.
These historic weather patterns are recorded in the ice. Not with ash which
might first come to mind, but in sea-salt spray from the Southern Ocean. When
southeast Australia experiences extreme bushfire weather over summer, there is
less wind around Antarctica, which means less sea-salt spray is laid down at
the ice core site.
Buried in the ice is a warning. At least seven times over the last two
millennia, our new research shows bushfire-prone southeast Australia has
endured bushfire weather as bad or worse than what was experienced during the
devastating Black Summer bushfires. The Black Summer bushfires burned through
about 1.5 million hectares, or more than six times the size of the Australian
Capital Territory.
This means natural climate variability can toss up more severe bushfire weather
than we have yet seen. Given human-caused climate change is also loading the
dice for worse and worse bushfire weather, it suggests we are underestimating
how bad bushfires can be in Australia."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
