Bushfires in Australia is taking place from centuries. More specifically in Victoria, Western Australia, Northern Territory and South Australia. Bushfires is known to be a natural disaster which occurs in Australia usually in dry and drought like season.

But year by year, Australia’s bushfire has aggravated to larger extent and even for longer time. So, thus the bushfires have any relation with climate change? If yes. then how?

Before that we will first understanding how the bushfires takes place.

Bushfires are wildfire that takes place due to hot and dry weather. Reason of bushfires occurring in the hot and dry season is that the dry season work as fuel for the bushfires. Thus, the small fire and even spark in dry season can start heavy bushfires.

Hot and dry weather turns the forest dry making the leaves of the trees dry and easy to catch fire.

Bushfire takes place mostly because of humans burn fire unintentionally. But can also cause due to lightning and even from the spark when one rock fall on the another.

This bushfires results in animal’s death due to getting burned alive. Also damage of the houses near the bushfires and even death of humans.

Bushfires can even change the weather due the smoke cloud of fire can result into airborne disease and even red skies.

As informed earlier, bushfires is a natural disaster and it is common in parts like Australia. But bushfires are increasing year after year. This means more and more animal death, more destruction of house, more people death and even heavy carbon emissions.

The main reason given for the escalation of the number of bushfires in Australia is global warming. Global warming is basically rising of average temperature of the globe.

Average global temperature of the earth is rising but the average temperature of the australia is rising even faster that average global temperature.

The below chart shows how the temperature of the Australia is grown year by year and even higher than the global average.

Global warming is the main reason for climate change. This effect the weather pattern of earth. The effect on Australia of climate change is longer and more intense hot and dry weather. This type of temperature is unfortunately favorable for bushfires.

Climate change also affects the water cycle. This water cycle is essential for rainfall. Change in the water cycle results in heavy rain like flooding or less rain than average.

In the case of Australia, the result of climate change is low rainfall which too supports the dry climate and leads to drought like situation suitable for bushfire.

One of the most important factors in this is basically oxygen. Oxygen is the gas which is needed for fire to burn. One fifth of earth’s atmosphere is oxygen. But that is not related to the climate change!

But climate change is also responsible for speeding up the wind. Speeding up the wind is what gives fire more oxygen. This helps bushfires to spread in large scale. Spreading of bushfires in large scale is what creates a catastrophe.

It has been clearly shown that in recent years, bushfires have grown to very large extent.

The below chart shows, how Number of major fires had increased in recent years

Conclusion:

The bushfires in Australia is a catastrophic situation occur in a specific season of the year. This is taking place from past centuries and it is a natural disaster.

This natural disaster is increasing its intensity year by year. Every year the situation is getting worse, the fire is getting more and more intense leaving a disastrous situation.

At the same time the average temperature of the globe is rising and average temperature of australia is rising even higher than the global average. This is resulting in hot and dry weather for longer time.

Australia is even experiencing the low rainfall in the region because of messed up water cycle. At the same time the wind is getting even faster than before. This faster wind is spreading the bushfires more faster.

The thing which are making bushfires a bigger issue than it was before are clearly related to the change happening on earth due to global warming and climate change.

But still bushfires are not that bad and should not be completely eliminated. Many of the species even uses the bushfires for their own benefit too. For example, The plant known as banksia uses fire to spread its seed. Thus, Bushfires are not all bad.

But the real issue is too much intensified bushfires for longer time. Climate change is responsible for the specific change. This is what taking the bushfires to the extreme.

Larger step need to be taken for tackling the climate change issue especially by turning into the sustainable sources of energy which can stop increasing the greenhouse effect. If the climate gets hotter the situation will get even worse!