The bushfires tearing through Australia are everyone’s problem, according to National Aeronautics and Space Administration researchers who predict that smoke from the blaze will make its way around the world.
NASA scientists have been analyzing satellite data since late December to track smoke on the move away from the continent. The space agency says they’ve already found smoke plumes making their way “halfway across the Earth” and affecting air quality in other countries.
As of Jan. 8, plumes from the firestorm had traveled all the way to South America, causing hazy skies and discolored sunrises and sunsets. The smoke is also causing “severe air-quality issues” in neighboring New Zealand, and darkening snow atop the mountainous island country.
Australia has been devastated by record-breaking wildfires that have raged since their annual fire season began in September. This week, the University of Sydney reported new estimates of the fire’s impact on wildlife, claiming that 1 billion birds, reptiles and mammals may have been killed as a result.
Meanwhile, the human death toll has risen to 28, Reuters reported this week, destroyed 2,000 homes and wiped-out 1.5 million acres of land.
“The fires in Australia are not just causing devastation locally,” says NASA in a statement on their website. “The unprecedented conditions that include searing heat combined with historic dryness, have led to the formation of an unusually large number of pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCbs) events. PyroCbs are essentially fire-induced thunderstorms.”
They warn that pyroCbs produce clouds that “behave like traditional thunderstorms but without the accompanying precipitation.” These supercharged storm clouds then make their way into the stratosphere and are carried thousands of miles away, altering weather conditions globally.
The full impact of these pyroCbs, they write, “is currently the subject of intense study.”
This process is not unusual, according to University of Reading climate scientist Nicolas Bellouin. However, the concentration of smoke particles emitted from this particular fire season in Australia is unprecedented.
He told CNN, “If we started to see fires of this level in Australia every year, or every couple of years, then the impacts on air quality and climate will become both concerning and noticeable.”
