When Fire Weather Becomes the Norm
The fires in Australia are a case study in the realities of climate change.
by Christine Kenneally
Jan 25, 2020
3 minutes
I met Claire Yeo, a fire meteorologist at Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, more than 10 years ago when I covered the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, Australia’s southeastern mainland state. The February 2009 fires were the most destructive and deadly the country had seen—shocking even to Yeo. At the time, she thought those fires would be a defining—and singular—event in her career.
Since then, global temperatures have steadily increased and the continent has become drier, leading Yeo to worry about a Black Saturday redux. Yet what she feared
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