Drought and Forest Fires in Australia

[Oscar]

Drought and Forest Fires in Australia

Fr. Seán McDonagh SSC. (February 10th 2009)

One cannot say of any single weather event, whether it be the Big Wind in Ireland in 1839, or the damage which hurricane Katrina did to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of Mississippi in 2005, or the current heat-wave and bush fires in Victoria, Australia, is caused by climate change. What one can say, is that severe weather events which heretofore happened once every 50 or 100 years will happen now much more frequently. For the past number of years scientists have been warning that climate change will bring higher temperatures to Australia and less rain. This will cause further record heat-waves and forest fires.

Even before the percentage of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increased, Australia was one of the driest continents on Earth. Its vegetation dominated by oil rich eucalyptus trees has meant that forest fires have happened frequently in the past. On “Black Friday” in 1939 71 people were killed by forest fires. In 1983 a forest fire on Ash Wednesday destroyed a huge amount of property and killed 75 people. Nevertheless, there is a growing consensus that climate change is making forest fires more frequent and ferocious. Gary Morgan, the head of the government-backed Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre, believes that climate change and droughts are altering the nature, ferocity and duration of bushfires. Scientists, such as Professor David Karoly, of Melbourne, said that the current heatwave with temperatures reaching the 45 degrees centigrade was unusual but that it will be much more frequent within the next 10 to 20 years.

Research by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the government-backed science organisation CSIRO predict that the number of days where bushfires might pose a severe risk in South-Eastern Australia could almost double by 2050 under the worse case climate change scenario.

Commenting on the current bush fires which have claimed the lives of over 200 people to date, Bob Brown, leader of the Green Party in the Australian Senate said that it is a sobering reminder of the need for this nation and the whole world to act and put tackling climate change as a top priority.

In late January 2009, the Australian Open Tennis Tournament was held during the hottest weather ever recorded for any major sporting event. Novak Djokovic sensationally pulled out of the quarter final with heat-related problems. Chaos reigned in Melbourne on January 30th 2009 when excessive heat caused an electricity substation to exploded. Half a million homes and business in the city lost power. City trains were shut down. People were trapped for hours in lifts and many roads were blocked as traffic lights failed. The emergency services were stretched to breaking point, as many people succumbed to heat-induced exhaustion.

Climate change is also affecting rainfall patterns in Western Australia. From 1829, (when weather records began to be compiled, up to 1975), winter rains were reliable in the area. This meant that farmers could plant winter wheat and be certain that the crop would get sufficient rains for it to thrive. However, since 1975, the average rainfall has dropped by 15%. Again it is probably too early to say why this is happening but more and more climatologists are pointing the finger at climate change.

The city of Perth, which is the capital of Western Australia, is also suffering from a serious shortage of water. With the decrease in winter rains, Perth has to draw on ground water reserves known as the Gnangara Mount to meet its water needs. After 30 years of ‘mining,’ this water reserve is at a critically low level, causing water experts to believe that there is a one-in-five chance of a ‘catastrophic failure of supply.’ They are now planning to build a desalination plant to provide fresh water for the city at the cost of A$350 million. Even with this huge expenditure, the proposed plant will only supply 15% of the city’s current needs. So it would seem that because of climate change the future of this city of one and a half million people is in the balance.

On a per capita basis Australians emit more greenhouse gas than any other people on Earth. This is because most of the electricity generated in Australia is produced from coal, because it is so plentiful. It would be quite extraordinary, if the severe weather patterns and habitat changes which climate change is bringing about, made vast areas of Australia uninhabitable for humans.

Fr. Seán McDonagh SSC
County Meath, Ireland