Reuters, SINGAPORE
Climate change has driven record-breaking outbreaks of fire in Africa, Asia and elsewhere this year, with conditions expected to get worse as the northern hemisphere’s summer approaches and El Nino weather patterns kick in, scientists said yesterday. Fires from January to last month have already caused unprecedented levels of damage, burning more than 150 million hectares of land, 20 percent more than the previous record, according to data compiled by World Weather Attribution (WWA), a research group that studies the role played by global warming in extreme weather events. The researchers said temperature records could be broken this year, causing widespread drought as well as fires, with the impact of human-induced climate change compounded by an especially strong “El Nino” effect.
Smoke billows behind a motorcycle rider as firefighters work to control the Max Road Miramar fire in Pembroke Pines, Florida, on Monday.
Photo: AFP
“Whilst in many parts of the world the global fire season has yet to heat up, this rapid start, in combination with the forecast El Nino, means that we’re looking at a particularly severe year materializing,” said Theodore Keeping, a wildfire expert at Imperial College London and part of the WWA group. As much as 85 million hectares of land have burned in Africa so far this year, 23 percent more than the previous record of 69 million hectares, he said.
The unusually high fire activity in Africa is being driven by rapid shifts from extremely wet to extremely dry conditions, he said. High rainfall produced more grass during the previous growing season, creating an abundance of fuel to feed the drought and heat-induced savannah fires of the past few months. Asian fires have burned as much as 44 million hectares of land so far this year, nearly 40 percent more than the previous record year of 2014, with India, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and China among the worst hit, Keeping said. He warned that wildfire risks could worsen later this year, with El Nino increasing the likelihood of severe heat and drought in Australia, Canada, the US and the Amazon rainforest.“The likelihood of harmful extreme fires potentially could be the highest we’ve seen in recent history if a strong El Nino does develop,” he said. El Nino weather conditions, caused by the warming of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, are expected to start this month, the World Meteorological Organization said last month. It could cause droughts in Australia, Indonesia and parts of southern Asia, as well as flooding in other regions, and might drive up temperatures, the UN agency said.“If there is a strong El Nino later this year, there is a serious risk that the effect of climate change and El Nino ... will result in unprecedented weather extremes,” said Friederike Otto, climate scientist at Imperial College London and cofounder of the WWA.