Scientists paint Australia fires as red alert on climate change

LONDON - With the sky outside a menacing red, Nerilie Abram's family is staying inside, with the windows shut and curtains drawn at their home in Canberra, Australia's smoke-choked capital.

"Scientifically, it's not surprising. We totally expected that as the climate warmed, fires in Australia would get worse. But the scale of this disaster is something I couldn't have imagined, and it's the same for a lot of people in Australia." In a nation of just 25 million, "most people know someone who's been affected", said Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

But it was "a little too early" to tell if the bushfire crisis was shifting views on climate change, he added.Climate change is generally causing a long-term trend toward hotter and drier conditions, while Abram said shifts in clouds and winds are gradually driving winter rain toward Antarctica.All that adds up to an extremely dangerous fire season - but it may not be the "new normal" some have dubbed it, she said.This season's runaway fires have occurred at 1.

Those, and the rising frequency of bushfires in some areas, could make recovery increasingly difficult for Australia's normally resilient forests, scientists predict.Those who argue nature will bounce back because Australia is fire-prone are "overlooking the interaction with climate change," he said.

200 people have already been charged to set fires, right?

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