Beginning in the second half of 2019, what we now know as the Black Summer fires began devastating eastern Australia.
Thousands of homes were destroyed, hundreds of lives were lost (mainly from smoke-induced health impacts) and smoke blanketed cities for weeks. By summer’s end in 2020, an area estimated to be larger than the United Kingdom had burned.
These fires were not normal. They were megafires: vast, intense blazes that burn for weeks or months. Warming temperatures and prolonged droughts are making such disasters more frequent in Australia, the United States, Canada and southern Europe.
