"The scale of this disaster is something I couldn't have imagined, and it's the same for a lot of people in Australia," says one climate scientist
By Laurie Goering
LONDON, Jan 11 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - With the sky outside a menacing red, Nerilie Abram's family is staying inside, with the windows shut and curtains drawn at their home in Canberra, Australia's smoke-choked capital.
On their return from recent holiday travels, "the kids didn't want us to open the curtains because outside it looked scary," said the climate scientist at the Australian National University.
Family friends who struggle with asthma have left town, she said, and most residents who do venture outside wear disposable masks - though the city, which had the world's worst air quality for several days in the past week, is running out of those.
"We're been really caught off-guard by these fires," said Abram, a professor who works with the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes.
"Scientifically, it's not surprising. We totally expected that as the climate warmed, fires in Australia would get worse. But the scale of this disaster is something I couldn't have imagined, and it's the same for a lot of people in Australia."
Large swathes of the country are battling wildfires that have killed 27 people and torched more than 10 million hectares (25 million acres) in the wake of the southern-hemisphere nation's hottest and driest year on record.
The ferocious, fast-moving blazes have consumed about 2,000 homes, blanketed major cities from Sydney to Melbourne in thick smoke, killed an estimated billion animals, and pushed exhausted firefighters to their limits.
And while summer bushfires are nothing new in Australia, scientists say these are different.
Their scale and ferocity raise questions about how nature will recover - and the fires are now affecting a much higher percentage of Australia's population, they say.
In the well-populated southeast, nearly a third of people are estimated to have been directly affected by this season's fire and smoke.
In a nation of just 25 million, "most people know someone who's been affected", said Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
That may have political implications in a country that less than a year ago elected a conservative coalition government with close ties to the powerful coal industry and a record of dismissing action on climate change as too costly.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been verbally abused while visiting fire-hit areas after returning from an ill-timed Hawaii holiday, with angry residents saying his government has done too little to respond and prevent damage.
"People are deeply affected," said Joe Fontaine, a lecturer in environmental science at Murdoch University in Perth, noting "a deep sense of loss and anxiety in society".
But it was "a little too early" to tell if the bushfire crisis was shifting views on climate change, he added.
WORSE COMING?
Australia's brutal fire season stems from a confluence of threats, scientists say.
Climate change is generally causing a long-term trend toward hotter and drier conditions, while Abram said shifts in clouds and winds are gradually driving winter rain toward Antarctica.
And, this season, unusual cold in the eastern Indian Ocean has cut off moisture moving to Australia.
All that adds up to an extremely dangerous fire season - but it may not be the "new normal" some have dubbed it, she said.
Not every year will be this bad, Abram said, although future years could possibly be much worse.
This season's runaway fires have occurred at 1.1 degrees Celsius of global warming compared to pre-industrial times.
However, the world is on track for more than 3 degrees of warming, even if current commitments under the Paris Agreement on climate change are met.
"We're on an upward trajectory," Abram said. "How bad is this going to get? How bad are we willing to let it get?"
Perkins-Kirkpatrick's husband, a volunteer firefighter and former army firefighter, said the colour of ash on the ground and dripping aluminium from melted car parts point to higher-than-usual temperatures in this season's fires.
Those, and the rising frequency of bushfires in some areas, could make recovery increasingly difficult for Australia's normally resilient forests, scientists predict.
"I'm sceptical that we will see things return to the way they were," Fontaine said.
Those who argue nature will bounce back because Australia is fire-prone are "overlooking the interaction with climate change", he said.
Some iconic Australian tree and plant species, like banksias with their flower spikes, may be on their way to disappearing as they struggle with more heat, drought and fires, he said.
Wildlife experts also estimate that as many as 30% of the country's koalas could have died in the blazes.
The widespread destruction of this season's fires similarly is expected to have implications for Australia's insurance and tourism industries, as well as for healthcare.
Extended smoke and fire exposure may spur lingering physical and mental health problems, doctors and scientists fear.
But whether those impacts will pressure politicians to take significant action on climate change remains in doubt, they said.
Previous dire warnings about climate change risks to the Great Barrier Reef had not worked, Abram said.
"I hope this (fire) threat affecting such a large proportion of the Australian population will be the catalyst to really take this seriously," she said.
"That could be one of the only positive things that comes out of this experience - if it's that wake-up call to see what climate change looks like."
(Reporting by Laurie Goering @lauriegoering, additional reporting by Michael Taylor; editing by Megan Rowling. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women's rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate)
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