Australia’s Black Summer Bushfires Burn Millions of Hectares

Higher than average temperatures and low moisture levels in bushfire fuels, after several years of drought, set the stage for the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season. Intense fire weather persisted through most of the season across much of eastern Australia, and New South Wales went on to record its worst fire season. The crisis, which became widely known as the Black Summer, brought more than 11,400 bush and grass fires to New South Wales alone between 1 July 2019 and the end of the state's fire season on 31 March 2020.

Across the nation, the blazes consumed more than 24 million hectares of land and destroyed more than 3,000 homes. The direct toll on human life was severe, with 33 people killed directly by the fires and an estimated 417 deaths attributed to persistent bushfire smoke. Smoke spread across the populated southeast, and a study in the Medical Journal of Australia found that fine-particle pollution above the historical 95th percentile was recorded somewhere in the affected region on 125 of 133 days, contributing to more than 3,100 hospital admissions for heart and lung problems. The ecological toll was similarly vast: researchers estimated that more than three billion animals were killed or displaced, more than a billion of them in New South Wales.