The fires that have been burning across Australia for weeks, particularly in the states of Queensland and New South Wales, have triggered the release of enormous quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere, exacerbating the already severe climate crisis. From 1 August to date, the bushfires are estimated to have caused the emission of 250 million tonnes of CO2, the majority of which — around 195 million tonnes — generated by the blazes that broke out in the ancient forests of New South Wales.

The fires have polluted as much as half of Australia

This is what emerged from data released by Nasa and reported by Guardian Australia. The quantity of CO2 involved is truly significant, equivalent to nearly half the annual greenhouse gas emissions produced by the entire nation. In 2018, Australia emitted 532 million tonnes of CO2.

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Forests under strain

Emissions caused by bushfires are usually considered carbon-neutral, given that forest regrowth should guarantee the absorption of a quantity of CO2 similar to that released when the trees burned. Forests are indeed regarded as carbon stores, or carbon sinks: thanks to their biomass, they are able to fix more CO2 than they emit.

Read also: Koalas are the main victims of the devastating fires in Australia

To compensate for the vast quantities of CO2 released in Australia as a result of the blazes, forests would normally need decades. But scientists believe that forested areas have been excessively stressed, also due to prolonged drought brought about by climate change, and would therefore be unable to reabsorb all the emissions released.

A devastating fire season

The current fire season, which will intensify further with the arrival of summer, has burned more than 2.7 million hectares of land in New South Wales. Fires this extensive and fierce have not been recorded in the area for over fifteen years, and forecasts rule out any prospect of rain arriving soon to aid plants and animals.

Australia must act

The fires have thus contributed to further undermining Australia's climate balance, while also compromising the capacity of forests to absorb future emissions. To demand that targeted measures be taken to address the climate crisis, hundreds of protesters, among them activists from the environmental movement Extinction Rebellion, took to the streets in Sydney just a few days ago.