Australian fires - New Zealand sky

[wolfie]

Today a westerly wind pattren transported smoke particles from Australia over 2000 km across the Tasman Sea over the North Island of New Zealand.
The sky went amber inside an hour and must have triggered light sensors as some street lights switched on as well as lights

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down at the local railway station. This over 3 hours ahead of the official sunset in summer.

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Taken on Canon Powershot G7X MkII.

 

[retiredfromlife]

Could have been from my place the other night, only more smoke here.
Did you get the big orange sun?

I take my hat off to the people fighting the fires. Yesterday blistering heat and big winds. It must he hell fighting fires in such conditions.

 

[Avondale87]

Bad times!
That's amazing Wolfie.

Really feel for all caught up in it.
We had smoke here in Tasmania from the fires also.
So many lives affected.

 

[Julia]

That really looks like a doomsday sky. I am sorry for the horrible situation "down there" which is affecting so many people and wildlife, even across such a vast stretch of sea. Sending good karma your way.

 

[mcgillro]

It's a disaster - my heart goes out to those who are affected. It must be terrifying.

We have had the haze here too, so simply can not imagine what it is like in Oz,

 

[wolfie]

Tonight's sunset hidden by thick cloud so nothing to see, supposedly sky will clear tomorrow as a southerly front pushes up. The fires are a traumatic event and undoubtedly be years for nature and man to fix the damage that has been done.

 

[mcgillro]

Tonight's sunset hidden by thick cloud so nothing to see, supposedly sky will clear tomorrow as a southerly front pushes up. The fires are a traumatic event and undoubtedly be years for nature and man to fix the damage that has been done.

There was an interesting item on Facebook, I don't know how scientifically based it was, but made sense.

It was an Aboriginal practice of burning back a certain percentage of forest/bush every year, to rid the ground of debris that inflames and spreads fire. It made sense.

 

[mcgillro]

It reminds me of something that I thought for years, that would be the end of life as we know it. I used to think it would be a bacteria, or perhaps a a virus, more likely a virus as time went on, and virises (viri) are so very clever.

Then I realised at some point that water was the new gold, or oil. Now I know that my country is water deprived we are at risk of fire if drought continues, yet we give our water away, so that a bottling plant can use yet more plastic to EXPORT our water.

 

[Avondale87]

There was an interesting item on Facebook, I don't know how scientifically based it was, but made sense.

It was an Aboriginal practice of burning back a certain percentage of forest/bush every year, to rid the ground of debris that inflames and spreads fire. It made sense.

That has been the aboriginal cry for ages but not much momentum has taken place.
Since they started putting that forward several years ago, I've taken note of the fires and the areas involved. I spend a lot of my time in or around the bush.

I've a very open mind on that one.
Population density was so low the area the burns in proportion to that would have been low.
Here (Tasmania) we have vast swathes of land that is dense forest. Other areas of grassland they say is down to aboriginal burning.
Some areas have never seen fires. Where those type of ecosystems are burnt as of last year, they say the land may never recover. Our Pencil and King Billy Pines and Huon Pines that are 2 thousand years old aren't able to withstand fires. Same for our Myrtles.

Changing climatic conditions and seasons are at play here.
We've had winter bushfires, not previously heard of.

To control burn all the areas of bush today would be a mammoth undertaking and it would be a 365 days a year job to keep up.

Any principal of former times may not be wise today or helpful etc.
It's complex, scary and at times like now terrible.

 

[mcgillro]

That has been the aboriginal cry for ages but not much momentum has taken place.
Since they started putting that forward several years ago, I've taken note of the fires and the areas involved. I spend a lot of my time in or around the bush.

I've a very open mind on that one.
Population density was so low the area the burns in proportion to that would have been low.
Here (Tasmania) we have vast swathes of land that is dense forest. Other areas of grassland they say is down to aboriginal burning.
Some areas have never seen fires. Where those type of ecosystems are burnt as of last year, they say the land may never recover. Our Pencil and King Billy Pines and Huon Pines that are 2 thousand years old aren't able to withstand fires. Same for our Myrtles.

Changing climatic conditions and seasons are at play here.
We've had winter bushfires, not previously heard of.

To control burn all the areas of bush today would be a mammoth undertaking and it would be a 365 days a year job to keep up.

Any principal of former times may not be wise today or helpful etc.
It's complex, scary and at times like now terrible.

I just wondered if there was anything valid behind the claims ...


It is so absolutely terrifying, and I do really wonder how there can be recovery from these terrible fires. I really fear climate change and what it means for countries, communities, and especially those dependent on agriculture and horticulture.

Water has been such an under valued commodity here in NZ, yet now we give our precious aquifer pure water away, and have local communities boiling their water because the infrastructure is inadequate. And we have water restrictions regarding our gardens etc - simply does not make sense!

Personally I ignore restrictions regarding gardens when I see how water is being given away!

 

[archaeopteryx]

I do really wonder how there can be recovery from these terrible fires.

Hi, you might try chapters 5-12 of Flammable Australia as a start. To attempt to distill a couple hundred page summary of a continent's worth of bushfire diversity and ecosystem adaptation to regional climates into a forum post

• Australia has the entire range of moisture controls on fire from the Outback, where fires are infrequent because it's dry and plants don't grow very much, to rainforests, where fires are infrequent because it's wet a lot of the time. Much of what's capturing attention in NSW at the moment is forest fires more towards the middle of that continuum, where it's wet enough for plant growth to create substantial fuel but also gets dry enough to support large and active bushfires.
• While the extent of scientific inquiry and observational record are limited, the overall pattern among the Australian analyses that I'm aware of generally suggests hotter and drier climate responses (as opposed to warmer and wetter trajectories). This applies a selection pressure from more mesic (wetter) towards more xeric (drier) ecological communities which favours transitions in the direction of forest -> woodland/savannah -> grassland -> desert by making it more likely any given bit of land gets pushed across a tipping point where it starts to switch to the next vegetation type.
• Because they're emphatic pulse disturbances, an increased likelihood of large and severe bushfires is a very visible mechanism in this pathway. Since the mesic-xeric vegetation continuum is one from landscapes with more fuel on them to those with less fuel, increased combustion by bushfires is an adaptation mechanism reducing mismatch between climate and vegetation by burning off excess fuel. This isn't really good or bad---it's just fire doing its thing with a sequence of chemical reactions that's been routine for hundreds of millions of years---but busy fire seasons such as the current one are certainly very hard to ignore.

I'm unsure of the status of vegetation and fire forecasting for Australia but, in somewhat similar areas I work in, estimates usually come in around 15% of land area will shift a step more xeric by 2070. In addition to the uncertainty around how much carbon we, as a species, choose to emit it's important to keep in mind integrating climate, vegetation, and fire models is fairly new and there's still quite some coding to be done to improve forecast skill. Personally, I would guess Australia's physiography may favour more than 15% shifting in some areas. And even small amounts of regional shifting may have 100% locally. This makes it tricky to articulate what constitutes recovery versus climate adaptation. In general, I think it's most useful to pick out specific areas of interest (say 10,000 ha or so), estimate their climate vulnerability, and look at what (if anything) can be done.

Based on their linking, @piggsy might have a more specific sense of some of this.

 

[Avondale87]

One of the real problems is lightening.
Last January we had massive bushfires.
From last year
About 1,500 lightning strikes were recorded across the state overnight on Monday, with 500 reported between 9:00am and midday on Tuesday.

Last week we had (in the midst of many out of control fires in Tasmania) a front come through bringing massive lightening strikes across the state.
Our wilderness areas in areas not known for fires were burnt, and fires from lightening didn't help.

The science of bushfires and the how to is really being tested right now.

 

[Bushboy]

Eucalyptus and the Black Wattle, are an excellent source of firewood here. They grow like crazy, and burn beautiful. Considered unwanted pest trees. The fire hazard they represent is enough for me to remove every one I find growing on my property.

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Check the weird colour cast from the Australian smoke in the atmosphere. Check also, the dead wattles I have poisoned.
The vegetation in the pic could easily be set on fire at the moment.
So much fuel lying on the ground dry.
Handheld 5 shot HDR.

 

[piggsy]

very good post

Not that much more, all my stuff is to do with trying to make the most of little urban spots, but, I do talk to people who do know their stuff on it this a bit. As you say it's a huge subject and you're basically tasked with explaining the fundamentals of how about 1/2 of the planet works to describe what's making anything happen.

Without wanting to generalise to an unreasonable degree: a lot of the deliberate burning historically was of grasslands, which tend to be a lot more controllable (drying faster, running into wetter and cooler forest at the edges or barren land), basically something a little like the burning of land for grouse hunting. This has left a general perception that "you just need to set it on fire" and that the extent to which it's not on fire is the cause of problems. Some species of trees in Australia are indeed pyrophytic, BUT need to be managed in an extremely careful way - so they can say, survive "A" fire, but not another fire 3 years later, which will just burn the fresh shoots off entirely and kill the tree.

Some aren't in any way tolerant to fire and it in no way helps them, either by directly perishing in the fire, or killing ecological services they need to survive such as animals, fungi, whatever - a whole bunch of things we barely even understand but are learning not to mess with. If those are burned, they're often replaced with species that like to be burned. If you burn those even more, you'll select for ones that like to burn very much and very often indeed.

Anyway, your instinct that this tends to be unbelievably local is as far as I know correct - before these last fires I was talking to someone whose area was this kind of thing (even directly going into "we know, for a fact, people burned this, but don't know if the burning made the landscape, or the landscape made it prone to burning"), and pretty much anything you read will contain some similar "there is 0 applicability of this to any other area" disclaimer about their specific research. But we'll see the extent to which "bothering to figure out what this bit of land needs" is at all popular in the face of, well, ignorance, coordinated disinfo, whatever.

 

[mcgillro]

Eucalyptus and the Black Wattle, are an excellent source of firewood here. They grow like crazy, and burn beautiful. Considered unwanted pest trees. The fire hazard they represent is enough for me to remove every one I find growing on my property.
View attachment 794982
Check the weird colour cast from the Australian smoke in the atmosphere. Check also, the dead wattles I have poisoned.
The vegetation in the pic could easily be set on fire at the moment.
So much fuel lying on the ground dry.
Handheld 5 shot HDR.

As we walked our dogs last evening among a stand of eucalypts, I said to my friend that NZ needs to stop planting them, because of the fire risk. Especially as our climate warms up. I've been saying it for ages actually, but because they grow well in dry conditions people keep using them. I have taken the few we had in Greytown, and then here in Hastings out. They're also too brittle for our windy weather.

 

[Bushboy]

Yep, gum tree leaves...
As easy to set on fire as dry paper.
My neighbour has just planted half a dozen. Go figure.

 

[Avondale87]

Just learnt your Prime Minister has been sending your fire-fighters over here since October.
Thanks Jacinda, thanks NZ, thanks NZ fire-fighters

 

[Brownie]

I see the US and Canada are sending firefighters as well. Our thoughts are with you folks. Australia is toward the top of the news here every evening, mostly stories about the horrible loss of wildlife. Here's hoping it rains soon.

 

[Avondale87]

They sure are coming from all over. We're (Tasmania) sending our crews up.
It's tragic.

 

[Slinky Malinki]

As we walked our dogs last evening among a stand of eucalypts, I said to my friend that NZ needs to stop planting them, because of the fire risk. Especially as our climate warms up. I've been saying it for ages actually, but because they grow well in dry conditions people keep using them. I have taken the few we had in Greytown, and then here in Hastings out. They're also too brittle for our windy weather.

As I said to my wife recently while diving around NZ, why do Kiwis persist with plant introduced trees throughout the countryside, including eucalypts, macrocarpas, oaks, various poplar species, and a variety of N. American and European coniferous species?