While wildfires continue to burn in Australia, the smoke from the flames seems to have traveled thousands of kilometers to Chile.
Clouds of smoke crossed 12,000 kilometers over the Pacific Ocean to the South American nation, moving in what is known as a low channel atmospheric pressure.
Edita Amador, a meteorologist with the Chilean Meteorological Directorate, told several news agencies that he expects the cloud to go to Argentina in the coming days.
He explained that he could form a “plug” on the ground, which could reduce the levels of ultraviolet radiation on the ground.
However, he explained the smoke should not cause problems, since it rarely rains in the affected area and the cloud is 6,000 meters above sea level.
On Monday, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NAOA) published a satellite image showing two areas of smoke from the fires in the direction of South America.
“The smoke is in the process of circumnavigating the planet,” they said.
The mass of particles had made the skies of New Zealand turn orange, as the country faces its own forest fires.
On Sunday, the New Zealand Meteorology Service shared a satellite image that shows “a significant cloud of smoke blowing over New Zealand from Australia.”
In addition to painting the skies a spooky color, fires have pumped huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
In mid-December, Niels Andela, a scientist at NASA‘s Goddard Space Flight Center working at the World Fire Emission Database, told The Guardian that the fires had released the equivalent of nearly half of the emissions annual CO2 from the country since August.
The 250 million metric tons came from the fires in New South Wales and Queensland, and since then, data suggests that 349 million metric tons have been released.
According to Andela, since August 1, fires in New South Wales have released 260 million metric tons of CO2 emissions, 9 million metric tons in Victoria, 4 million metric tons in South Australia and 76 million tons Metrics in Queensland.
He said plants often absorb CO2 emissions from grassland and Savannah fires, but it could be decades before burned forests grow back and recover the ability to absorb greenhouse gases.
Until Tuesday night in Australia, forest fires continued to devastate Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.
In addition, yesterday it was learned that from this week tens of thousands of wild camels would be sacrificed in an effort to save water.
See the Twitter post and video below:
This morning, #GOESEast spied two areas of #smoke that originated from the #AustralianBushFires. The smoke is in the process of circumnavigating the #planet.
Real-time imagery: https://t.co/Ahd9xNjigO#Australia #BushFireAustralia #AustralianFires #BushFires #Fires #Earth pic.twitter.com/GkDwUPQ8xy— NOAA Satellites (@NOAASatellites) January 6, 2020
Source: Ismorbo
