Super-outbreaks of fire thunderstorms could change Earth's climate

[canetoad]

Super-outbreaks of fire thunderstorms could change Earth's climate, Australian and US experts warn

Fire thunderstorms — which occur in pyrocumulonimbus clouds — not only create their own weather system but may also be powerful enough to actually change the climate, according to scientists from Australia and the United States.

A "super-outbreak" of fire thunderstorms — also known as pyroCb events — during Australia's Black Summer fires of 2019-20 released the energy of about 2,000 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons, according to a study published recently in the journal Nature Climate and Atmospheric Science.

"The energy released was just vast," said Rick McRae from the University of New South Wales, a co-author of the paper.

"It doesn't matter what units you use, they're big numbers, far bigger than we're used to handling."

In a pyroCb (pyrocumulonimbus) event, a bushfire becomes so intense that it changes the dynamics of vast areas of the surrounding atmosphere, building a distinctive, anvil-shaped cumulonimbus cloud high above the fire, injecting smoke and ash as far up as the stratosphere.

More: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-28/fire-thunderstorms-may-cause-nuclear-winter-scientists-say/100323566

[orwell]

1. 5 years of fire...

...in NorCal. I've seen a lot of them. They are at the same time awesome and terrifying.

It looks like a vertical nuclear explosion. Then after a while they fall over and collapse.