Bushfires: Ash from Australia threatens NZ glaciers

Extraordinary pictures reveal the extent of the damage Australia’s bushfire crisis is doing to New Zealand.

Smoke and dust from Australia, mixed with persistent westerly winds, are turning glaciers at Mount Aspiring National Park in New Zealand orange and pink. Picture: Liz Carlson

New Zealand’s retreating southern glaciers are facing a new threat: clouds of orange soot from bushfires in Australia.

Scientists said that the ash which fell on the pristine snow this week from 1900km away across the Tasman Sea could absorb more heat and melt snow faster this summer, as one climate disaster accelerates another.

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NSW and Queensland are facing an escalating bushfire crisis just days into summer, with heatwave conditions forecast to worsen the fire danger over the coming days.

A “megafire” the size of greater Sydney that is currently raging on the northwestern outskirts of the NSW capital is likely to burn for weeks, authorities say.

Andrew Mackintosh, an expert on glaciers and climate at Monash University in Melbourne, said: “If it stays on the surface then it will certainly enhance melt. If fire frequency, ash and dust transport increase, there is a chance that this will hasten the demise of New Zealand glaciers.”

New Zealand has more than 3000 glaciers that are fast disappearing. Many have shrunk by nearly a third since the 1970s and could be gone by the end of the century.

Last year, in the hottest summer on record, more than half of the 51 largest glaciers lost all the snow from the preceding winter and some from previous years.

They included the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers, two of the top tourist attractions on the South Island.

A woman climbs on Fox Glacier before the fires. Picture: supplied

Professor Mackintosh said that the effects of the dust would depend on whether enough snow fell to recoat the glaciers, thus reversing the heating effect, and on whether more ash arrived.

“What happens this year and into next will depend on how the summer evolves – whether there will be new snow, and if the dust flux continues,” he said.

Sydney hospitals reported a 25 per cent rise in emergency cases on Friday, many of them patients with smoke-related breathing problems.

An area the size of Wales has already been burnt out since the fires began in September in NSW.

Last week a helicopter pilot saw the devastation in New Zealand while flying over Mount Aspiring National Park, in the South Island.

New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research said that unusually strong westerly winds had helped to blow the orange dust across the Tasman Sea.

Liz Carlson, a travel writer who first published photographs of the pollution, said: “Our glaciers … are already truly endangered; it puts the impact of climate change into even more stark reality we can’t ignore.”

A picture supplied by Liz Carlson shows how NZ glaciers and snow are being painted by Australian bushfire ash.

New Zealand’s mountains were coated in dust from Australia a decade ago when a monster dust storm, known as Red Dawn, carried an estimated 2.5 million tonnes of sediment in a plume that was almost 3200km long. It was the largest loss of soil from the Australian continent ever reported.

There was an upside for whales. Much of that dust fell into the Tasman Sea before it could reach New Zealand and nutrients led to a spike in phytoplankton, their source of food.

The Times