What Do the Australian Black Summer Fires Signify for the Global Fire Crisis?

Abstract

The 2019–20 Australian fire season was heralded as emblematic of the catastrophic harm wrought by climate change. Similarly extreme wildfire seasons have occurred across the globe in recent years. Here, we apply a pyrogeographic lens to the recent Australian fires to examine the range of causes, impacts and responses. We find that the extensive area burnt was due to extreme climatic circumstances. However, antecedent hazard reduction burns (prescribed burns with the aim of reducing fuel loads) were effective in reducing fire severity and house loss, but their effectiveness declined under extreme weather conditions. Impacts were disproportionately borne by socially disadvantaged regional communities. Urban populations were also impacted through prolonged smoke exposure. The fires produced large carbon emissions, burnt fire-sensitive ecosystems and exposed large areas to the risk of biodiversity decline by being too frequently burnt in the future. We argue that the rate of change in fire risk delivered by climate change is outstripping the capacity of our ecological and social systems to adapt. A multi-lateral approach is required to mitigate future fire risk, with an emphasis on reducing the vulnerability of people through a reinvigoration of community-level capacity for targeted actions to complement mainstream fire management capacity.

Aotearoa New Zealand's 21st‐Century Wildfire Climate

“…The 2019/2020 "Black Summer" bushfire season in Australia was long and extreme, with 33 direct fatalities, an estimated 417 excess deaths from bushfire smoke, massive loss to ecosystems-including an estimate of over 1 billion animals killed, and an estimated $20 billion impact on the economy (Abram et al, 2021;Dickman & McDonald, 2020;Filkov et al, 2020;Lindenmayer & Taylor, 2020;Nolan et al, 2021). van Oldenborgh et al (2021) conducted an attribution study into the Australian bushfires using the same FWI metrics as used in this study.…”

Remarkable Resilience of Forest Structure and Biodiversity Following Fire in the Peri-Urban Bushland of Sydney, Australia

“…An especially dangerous bushfire future is projected for Australia's temperate forest regions [1], as warming intensifies the decline of southern Australia's winter rainfall and increases the number of extreme heat events [2]. This combination will drive greater likelihood of intense forest fire conditions [3], with more hot, dry, windy weather, such as recently witnessed during the "Black Summer" of 2019-2020, which resulted in the most extensive forest fires in Australia's recorded history [1,4,5]. These mega-fires pose increasing risks to human life, biodiversity and socioeconomic wellbeing in Australia and other fire-prone regions globally [6,7] (Figure 1).…”

Carbon Dioxide and Particulate Emissions from The 2013 Tasmanian Firestorm: Implications for Australian Carbon Accounting

“…These issues are well illustrated by re activity in Australian temperate forests that have experienced increased re danger due to extreme re weather conditions, with resultant lengthening of re seasons earlier into spring months, associated with climate change [9]. Further, the recent 2019-2020 Black Summer res in south-eastern Australia are historically unprecedented and most likely exacerbated by climate change [10][11][12]. Analyses involving remote sensing of atmospheric chemistry suggest that the Black Summer res emitted 715 Tg of CO 2 [13], in broad agreement with a bootstrapped emissions estimate of c 670 Tg [3].…”