1. Home
  2. Update

Australia heading into new 'fire age', warns global fire historian

Source(s): Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Upload your content

By Gregg Borschmann

[...]

Fire historian Stephen J. Pyne told RN Breakfast humans were pushing the planet to the opposite of an Ice Age — a new age of fire that he calls the Pyrocene.

[...]

Mr Pyne, an emeritus professor at Arizona State University, said Australia had been a fire continent for millions of years but that the Black Saturday fires in 2009 and the most recent 2019-2020 fire season marked a new era.

[...]

He said despite climate modelling predicting longer, more dangerous fire seasons, he was optimistic Australia did have positives we could look to.

[...]

"When you add it all up, we've got changes in sea level, we've got mass extinctions, we've got huge changes in biogeography underway and in many ways fire is an index and mover of [this new] age."

[...]

Read the original story here

Editors' recommendations

Explore further

Hazards Wildfire
Country and region Australia

Please note: Content is displayed as last posted by a PreventionWeb community member or editor. The views expressed therein are not necessarily those of UNDRR, PreventionWeb, or its sponsors. See our terms of use

Is this page useful?

Yes No
Report an issue on this page

Thank you. If you have 2 minutes, we would benefit from additional feedback (link opens in a new window).