Thread by @ClimateNerilie

Tomorrow evening we have a big paper coming out on bushfires in Australia.

I’ll tweet a summary of the new work once the embargo lifts, but first here is a thread about the backstory:

The backstory began for me on Christmas Eve of 2019, when I was approached by @sciam to write an opinion piece on the link between climate change and the bushfires that had been ravaging Australia for months.

https://twitter.com/sciam/status/1212032068869410816?s=20

The @sciam piece was published on New Years Eve as the fire crisis in Australia escalated.

Research has since shown that during this period the fires had an atmospheric impact equivalent to a moderate volcanic eruption.

[Image: ESA Sentinal-2, 31/12/2019]

Frustratingly the political and public discourse continued to downplay the scale of the fire disaster and its links to climate change.

There is evidence that this included a deliberate mis-information campaign to pin the fires on an #ArsonEmergency:

theconversation.com/bushfires-bots…

The #ArsonEmergency claims have been repeatedly debunked, including in government inquiries following the #BlackSummer disaster:

abc.net.au/mediawatch/epi…

At the end of January 2020, as fires burnt just outside of my home city of Canberra, we produced an open letter pointing to unequivocal evidence that human-caused climate change was increasing fire risk, and calling for action to mitigate climate change.

https://twitter.com/ClarkJHDonovan/status/1223485785522851840?s=20

The open letter was an effort initiated by @SuburbanRainbow, and gained support from more than 400 climate and fire experts in just a few days.

…stralianbushfiresandclimatechange.com

Our experience showed that there was a real need to bring together experts to thoroughly assess what we know – and what we don’t yet know – about how climate influences bushfire risk in Australia.

I’m super-proud of what our team has produced.

Details to follow tomorrow.

So it has been a big 24 hours in the world since I started this thread, but our paper has now been published.

I'll post a new thread shortly describing what we found

nature.com/articles/s4324…