Australian Black Summer
From June 2019 through March 2020, wildfires consumed 24 million hectares of southeast Australia — an area larger than England. 33 people died directly. Up to three billion animals were displaced or killed. The smoke circumnavigated the globe.
The fires were driven by Australia's hottest and driest year on record. From mid-October 2019, conditions across NSW and Victoria reached IFI (Index of Fire Intensity) levels that hadn't been seen since the 2009 Black Saturday fires. By Christmas, simultaneous fires in NSW, Victoria, and South Australia had merged into mega-complexes covering thousands of square kilometers.
Pyrocumulus clouds — fire-generated thunderstorms — became routine. Several pyroCb systems generated their own lightning, igniting new fires kilometers ahead of the main front. The Currowan Fire alone burned 499,621 hectares over 74 days.
Smoke plumes rose into the stratosphere and crossed the Pacific to South America within 7 days, then continued east around the planet. NASA Worldview satellite imagery showed the plume circling the globe by January 14, 2020 — a meteorological event with no precedent in the satellite era.
An estimated 3 billion vertebrate animals were killed or displaced — including 60,000 koalas on Kangaroo Island alone, where the resident population collapsed from 50,000 to fewer than 10,000.