资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

By Adam Vaughan

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

THE year began with extreme weather in Australia. Bushfires in the nation, made possible by a severe drought, produced apocalyptic scenes of ships rescuing people from beaches, dry thunderstorm clouds and wildlife fleeing beneath orange skies.

The fires pumped three times the amount of smoke into the stratosphere as anything seen before, and they burned an unprecedented 58,000 square kilometres of forest in New South Wales and Victoria. While partly due to natural cycles, the weather conditions that enabled the …