Bushfire

The catastrophic Australian bushfires in 2019 to 2020 contributed to ocean cooling thousands of miles away, ultimately nudging the tropical Pacific into a rare multiyear La Niña event that dissipated only recently. The research was led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and published in Science…

Populations of koalas in New South Wales and Queensland are so low they are now considered endangered. (Image credit: John Giustina/Getty Images) Koalas present something of a paradox. They are a poster child for imminent extinction, at risk from deforestation, climate change and bushfires. Yet, where I live in South…

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Black Summer smoke. Credit: NASA The 2019-2020 bushfire season was devastating. Vast areas of pristine forest burned, many for the first time in memory. By some estimates, a billion native animals died up and down Australia's east coast. Dozens of people died. While Sydney's skies are blue again, Australia's Black…

CNN  —  Smoke from Australia’s worst wildfires in decades may have contributed to the rare triple La Niña weather event that impacted continents thousands of miles away, according to new research. Flames burned through 46 million acres from June 2019 to January 2020 – during Australia’s summer months – thrusting…

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The 2019-2020 Australian bushfires threw up so much ash into the atmosphere that it resulted in a cooling of the southern Pacific and hence a La Niña climate phenomenon, a new study says.Volcanic eruptions that send vast ash plumes into the atmosphere are thought to trigger La Niña events, but…

Key PointsThe report said the bushfires were "exceptional" in their severity.Researchers used modelling to demonstrate how emissions from the bushfires could shift weather patterns.Global weather patterns oscillate between cooling La Niña and warming El Niño cyclesAustralia's Black Summer bushfire catastrophe coughed up so much smoke it may have fuelled the…

Typically, a La Niña lasts a year or two and can have a wide range of global effects—the southern US tends to get drier, for instance, and the Pacific Northwest gets wetter. But this one began in 2020 and ended just a few months ago.  This La Niña was also weird…

Nearly a million acres have been destroyed in wildfires across the western Canadian province of Alberta, with more than 30,000 people forced to evacuate and oil production forced to halt after a state of emergency was declared this weekend.  The province, which is the country’s largest producer of crude oil…