The Fort McMurray Fire: 'Absolutely a Harbinger of Things to Come'

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/11/fort-mcmurray-fire-absolutely-harbinger-things-come

The devastating wildfire in Fort McMurray, Canada appears to be losing its intensity, as weather conditions improve for firefighters and initial assessments of staggering damage trickle in.

Meanwhile, awareness of the massive fire's significance in the context of climate change continues to spread.

"Alberta's unusually early and large fire is just the latest of many gargantuan fires on an Earth that's grown hotter with more extreme weather," the Associated Press wrote on Wednesday.

Indeed, the New York Times reported last month:

Fires, once largely confined to a single season, have become a continual threat in some places, burning earlier and later in the year, in the United States and abroad. They have ignited in the West during the winter and well into the fall, have arrived earlier than ever in Canada and have burned without interruption in Australia for almost 12 months.

The Times reported further on Wednesday, citing boreal forest fires "throughout the hemisphere":

Global warming is suspected as a prime culprit in the rise of these fires. The warming is hitting northern regions especially hard: Temperatures are climbing faster there than for the Earth as a whole, snow cover is melting prematurely, and forests are drying out earlier than in the past. The excess heat may even be causing an increase in lightning, which often sets off the most devastating wildfires.

[Ghost Dog]

1. Tasmania

The 2016 Tasmanian bushfires are a large series of bushfires in Tasmania which started in January 2016 throughout the state, and have continued into February 2016, with considerable damage to fire sensitive areas in the Central Highlands, West Coast and South West regions.

Fire ecologists have stated that some of the dead trees killed by the bushfires were more than 1000 years old and part of a confined, Gondwana-era ecosystem unique to Tasmania that in some cases has never burned before. Pictures of burnt areas and vegetation taken by conservationists have prompted warnings that the alpine ecosystem could be completely lost within decades unless more was done to protect it, given the increased risk of fire due to climate change.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Tasmanian_bushfires

... The dry spring was followed by Tasmania’s warmest summer since records began in 1910, with temperatures 1.78℃ above the long-term average. Many regions, especially the west coast, stayed dry during the summer – a pattern consistent with climate projections. The dry spring and summer led to a reduction in available water, including a reduction of inflows into reservoirs...

... By the end of February, more than 300 fires had burned more than 120,000 hectares, including more than 1% of Tasmania’s World Heritage Area – alpine areas that had not burnt since the end of the last ice age some 8,000 years ago. Their fire-sensitive cushion plants and endemic pine forests are unlikely to recover, due to the loss of peat and soils...

http://theconversation.com/was-tasmanias-summer-of-fires-and-floods-a-glimpse-of-its-climate-future-58055

[LittleGirl]

2. thanks for the link

1000 yr old trees burned up is really sad.