The science behind climate change and its impact on bushfires (?)

I rather enjoyed this article, long-winded though it is.  Prof. Karoly is an old global warming warrior from way back so he has had a long time to perfect his arguments for global warming and, in the version of his talk below, he does present a much more detailed case than one usually encounters.

All of the assertions below are however unreferenced and most have been challenged many times.  And as is normal in Leftist writing, there is no mention of any of the facts which are contrary to his case.  The article leaves out almost all of the many facts which tend to contradict the global warming hypothesis.  Such argumentation is of course completely unscholarly and identifies the article as propaganda only.

Prof Karoly's scientific background does however show in a number of useful ways so it is a pity that such a long article will remain mostly unread -- as there are a number of basic scientific points below that Warmists would do well to note.

The one that stands out most below is his perfectly correct and perfectly basic point that global warming CANNOT explain Australia' drought or any other drought.  Anybody who has watched a kettle boil will know that heating water causes it to give off water vapour so warming the oceans will also give off more water vapour -- and that comes down again as rain.  So a warmer world would be a wetter world.  So, if anything, drought proves that global warming is NOT going on.

So in his words on the drought, Prof. Karoly contradicts the claims made by almost all Warmists.  There will be much reaching for indigestion remedies by almost all Warmists who read those of his words.

What Prof. Karoly leaves out:

It's hard to believe but in an article that is allegedly about bushfires, there is no mention of the biggest influence on the fires:  Fuel accumulation in the form of fallen branches and leaves.  Without fuel, there would be no fires. If it's not about global warming he doesn't want to know about it, apparently.

If only for the sake of argument, most climate skeptics are prepared to concede that atmospheric CO2 has SOME warming effect. The dispute is about its magnitude.  Is the warming effect large or is it utterly trivial?  The Warmists have little more than assertions for their claim that it is large.  There are, on the other hand, both theoretical and empirical reasons to say that the effect is trivial.

On the theoretical side, the fact that CO2 forms much less than one percent of the atmosphere should indicate that any effect from it will be trivial.  More importantly, however,  a heated atmospheric molecule will radiate heat in ALL directions, not just downwards towards the earth. And the higher up the molecule is, the less heat from it will hit the earth.  Rather than seeing heated CO2 molecules as a blanket or a greenhouse roof, a better analogy for their effect would be a bucket with a small hole in it.  Only what gets through the hole hits the earth.

But all theories must be tested against the facts so what are the facts?  The most basic fact is that over the last 150 years or so we have experienced only about one degree Celsius of warming.  Is that trivial?  If you walked from one room into another where the temperatures in the two rooms differed by only one degree you would not normally notice anything.  You would need an instrument to detect the difference.  So I think "trivial" is an excellent word for that difference.

But a much less impressionistic piece of evidence for the triviality of CO2 induced warming is also available.  If CO2 has the effect hypothesized and the effect is large, we should notice increased warming every time the CO2 levels rise.  But that is not remotely true.  Increases in CO2 mostly have no noticeable warming effect.  CO2 levels can shoot up with absolutely no discernable effect on global temperatures.

Perhaps the most striking example of that is the "grand hiatus". For 30 years between 1945 and 1975, CO2 levels leapt but global temperatures remained flat. See here.  How come?  CO2 molecules don't have a little computer inside them telling them to take a holiday from emitting heat.  They emit heat all the time. So if they were emitting heat from 1945 to 1975, that heat must have been tiny in amount, so tiny as to be undetectable.

30 years of no effect would be notable in itself but 1945 is supposed to  be the year in which anthropogenic global warming began -- with all the postwar reconstruction.  The 1945 to 1975 period is a critical test of the global warming theory -- and it fails that test utterly.

So it takes only a few basic facts to show that Prof. Karoly's pontifications are a castle built on sand


Charis Chang reports:

When considering the science around climate change, one expert believes it’s useful to compare it to another famous hypothesis – the theory of gravity.

Not many people would think to cast doubt on the theory of gravity, and according to Professor David Karoly, who leads the Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub in the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program at CSIRO, the evidence that human activity is causing global warming is so strong it is equal to this theory.

“The theory on the human impact on climate change is just as strong, or stronger, than the scientific basis for the theory of gravity,” Prof Karoly told news.com.au.

Prof Karoly said that there was also evidence climate change was a factor in recent devastating bushfires in Australia.

Prof Karoly will explain the science at a free public lecture as part of the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute 2020 Summer School public lecture in Melbourne on Wednesday, January 29. His speech will also be streamed online.

When we talk about science, Prof Karoly believes it’s helpful to remember we are not talking about “beliefs”.

Science is in fact a process that tests a hypothesis to provide conclusions about the way nature works.

Not convinced? Here’s the science.

Some say the world’s climate has always changed and in the past there have been ice ages and warmer glacial periods, which is true.

The difference is whether humans have caused the changes.

We know that humans could not have had any influence on the past ice ages for example, because there were no humans on the planet.

So how do we know that the climate changes now are due to human activity?

Prof Karoly said there were two approaches.

The first approach involves examining “observational data”. If we want to identify long-term trends we need to look at data collected over a wide area and across at least 30 years.

To figure out why the Earth is warming, there are some logical factors to look at first.

The main things that impact the Earth’s climate are sunlight from the sun, how it is absorbed in the atmosphere and how energy is lost from Earth and sent into space.

One thing that can impact the amount of sunlight we get includes the amount of clouds, ice and snow because they all reflect sunlight, making it cooler.

However, greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere can also affect temperatures. These gases make the planet hotter because they absorb heat radiation from the Earth and prevent this from being released into space as quickly.

Greenhouse gases can include carbon dioxide, methane and water vapour. “When greenhouse gases increase, the surface temperature of the Earth increases,” Prof Karoly said.

So what does the data tell us about these factors?

‘SOMETHING WEIRD IS HAPPENING’

Analysis of air bubbles from ice cores trapped in ice in Greenland and Antarctica showed that over the last 10,000 years, carbon dioxide varied a small amount, hovering around 280 and 290 parts per million.

But if you look at the last 150 years, it’s a different story. Carbon dioxide now sits at 400 parts per million.

“This has increased by more than 40 per cent,” Prof Karoly said.

“It is higher than at any time in the last 10,000 years. In fact, it’s higher than any time in the last million years.”

“So that suggests … something weird is happening.”

Prof Karoly said you had to go back more than three million years to find a time when carbon dioxide was around 400 parts per million.

“Three million years ago when carbon dioxide was higher, temperatures were more than two degrees warmer and sea levels were more than 10 metres higher,” he said.

Humans were not around three million years ago so they can’t be blamed for the high amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

So what was cause of these higher levels of carbon dioxide?

Some experts have suggested the carbon dioxide was actually being released from the ocean.

“A warmer ocean can’t absorb as much carbon dioxide,” Prof Karoly said. “As it heats up, it can’t hold as much carbon and this is released into the atmosphere.”

However, the type of carbon dioxide the ocean releases is different to that released by burning fossil fuels and land clearing.

Prof Karoly said the carbon dioxide has a different chemical composition so scientists are able to distinguish between the two.

“Carbon dioxide released from the ocean doesn’t use up oxygen,” Prof Karoly said.

Over the last 40 years, scientists have been able to monitor the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and the fall in oxygen has exactly matched the increase in carbon dioxide that you would expect if it was coming from the burning of fossil fuels and decomposition of vegetation from land clearing.

“What we now know, is that the increase to carbon is not natural, it’s due to human activity, from the burning of fossil fuels and land clearing,” Prof Karoly said.

This is not just a theory, it is based on “observational evidence”, that is, scientists have data that shows the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is coming from fossil fuels and land clearing.

AND NIGHTS ARE GETTING HOTTER

We can also look at other observational data to help strengthen the theory.

If the Earth was warming up because of increasing sunlight, then you would expect temperatures during the day to increase and for it to be cooler at night (because there is no sun at night!).

However, what scientists found is that nights were actually warming up more so than days.

This points to greenhouse gases playing a role.

As noted above, greenhouse gases trap heat radiation from the Earth and stop it from being released into space as quickly.

This effect can be seen for example, on nights with more clouds, which don’t cool down as much as there is more water vapour in the atmosphere.

In contrast, deserts are more cool at night because there is not as much water vapour over these areas, and it’s a similar story in coastal areas.

So if nights are warming up more than days, it’s unlikely that the sun is playing a role in this, it’s more likely that greenhouse gases are trapping heat on Earth and pushing up temperatures.

Scientists have also looked at temperatures in the Earth’s stratosphere, which is the layer of the atmosphere from about 10km up.

The stratosphere warms because the ozone layer it contains absorbs the sun’s ultraviolent radiation.

If there was more sunlight, you would expect the upper atmosphere to warm up because it was absorbing more ultraviolet rays.

But if there was an increase in greenhouse gases then you would expect the stratosphere to be cooler because carbon dioxide is efficient, not only at absorbing heat radiation but also at releasing it into space, cooling it down.

“Observations have shown that the surface and lower atmosphere have warmed, and the upper atmosphere has cooled in the last 50 years — the entire time we’ve been monitoring it through balloons and other satellites,” Prof Karoly said.

“This pattern of temperature change has happened everywhere and cannot be explained by increasing sunlight,” he said. “And it’s been getting stronger, which is exactly what you would expect from increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

NOW ADD COMPUTERS TO THE EQUATION

The first approach to looking at climate change is “observational data” but you can also use complex mathematical models of the climate system.

Around the world, Prof Karoly said more than 50 complex climate models had been developed to test climate theories on a larger scale.

While some may question how scientists could simulate the climate when they can’t forecast the weather over long periods of time, Prof Karoly said it was because the climate models looked at levels of radiation, which determine long-term climate.

“Models solve physical equations for the absorption and transmission of radiation in the atmosphere, and for the motion of the air, and for the motions of the ocean,” he said.

These simulations have shown that without human influences there would not be any long-term warming trend.

Temperatures would have stayed pretty much the same with only two-tenths of a degree of warming.

Instead the world has warmed by 1.1 degrees and the warming over Australia has been even higher than the global average, at 1.5 degrees.

This is because land warms up faster than the ocean.

WHAT ABOUT THE BUSHFIRES?

So how does this relate to the catastrophic bushfires that have raged across Australia in recent months?

Higher mean temperatures give rise to a greater chance of heatwaves and hot extremes, Prof Karoly said.

“We have good observational data of the current summer and the last 50 years,” he said.

“There have been marked increases in heatwaves and hot days in all parts of Australia.”

Australia experienced its hottest and driest year on record in 2019 and December 2019 had a number of Australia’s hottest days ever recorded.

“We have also seen increases in sea levels, exactly what you would expect from climate change and the warming of ocean waters and melting of ice sheets and glaciers on land.”

When it comes to the intensity of bushfires, Prof Karoly said there are certain factors that were known to be important.

The McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index was developed to measure the degree of fire danger in Australian forests and the likelihood they will occur.

It combines factors including the temperature of air, wind speed, the dryness of the air (measured by relative humidity) and the dryness of the fuel and the ground (measured by rainfall over the previous month).

“So the combination of high temperatures, strong winds, low humidity and no rainfall leads to extreme fire danger,” Prof Karoly said.

These were exactly the conditions experienced in NSW and southern Queensland in September and October where there were record high temperatures and low humidity.

These conditions were also experienced in Canberra, coastal NSW and particularly East Gippsland in Victoria, which was why there was extreme fire danger in these areas.

The next question is whether climate change caused these conditions.

Prof Karoly says climate change has led to higher temperatures, as discussed above, but it’s unlikely it had a major role in the drought conditions.

He said if the rainfall in 2019 was related to climate change you would expect wetter conditions in northern Australia, not the record dry year experienced in 2019.

Climate change has also been linked with the long-term rainfall in the cool season in south-east Australia.

Prof Karoly believes the drought in 2019 may actually be due to “natural variations” and the “Indian Ocean Dipole”.

The IOD refers to the seesawing temperatures in the Indian Ocean, with colder waters closer to northern Australia and hotter waters closer to Africa.

There were also changes in wind patterns in the south of Australia and over Victoria and NSW, which led to stronger westerly winds that reduced the rainfall over the NSW coast and East Gippsland, where the worst fires and conditions have been.

Prof Karoly believes it was the stronger westerly winds and the Indian Ocean Dipole that ramped up the fire intensity, however, this was combined with the extreme temperatures caused by climate change, sparking Australia’s deadly fire season.

“So it was a combination of natural climate variability and climate change,” he said.

SOURCE 






Minnesota Had More Wind and Solar in 2018 than Ever Before But CO2 Emissions Went Up

Minnesota had more wind turbines and solar panels in 2018 than in any year prior, but carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity generation sector increased compared to 2017 and 2016 levels, according to the most recent data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

According to EIA, Minnesota power plants emitted 29.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2018, compared to 28.3 million in 2017, and 29.6 million in 2016. This means our carbon dioxide emissions were about half a percent higher in 2018 than 2016, when we had much fewer wind turbines and solar panels installed in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

The graph below shows the total installed capacity for wind and solar from 2005 to 2018. You’ll see that the amount of wind and solar on the grid has increased by 871 megawatts (approximately 24 percent) since 2016, yet carbon dioxide emissions increased during this time frame.

But why? One reason is that Minnesota generated less electricity from wind in 2018 than in 2017.

As you can see in the graph below, the amount of installed wind capacity in Minnesota reached a new all-time high in 2018 (so did electric bills), but wind generation was about four percent lower in 2018 than in 2017. There could be multiple reasons why the wind was less useful in 2018 than 2017, including lower wind speeds or mechanical failure, but regardless of the reason, the take away from the data should be the same: more wind turbines does not necessarily mean more  electricity generation from wind.

This data presents an inconvenient reality for liberal politicians who claim human carbon dioxide emissions are causing an existential climate crisis.

How in the world can these politicians credibly claim that climate change is an existential crisis, while saying that we can only build impossibly expensive wind, solar, and battery storage when emissions have increased even though we have 24 percent more renewable capacity on the grid than we did in 2016?

Despite all of the sanctimonious platitudes wind and solar supporters spout about creating a better world for the children, they are not the adults in the room. If they were, they would seek to reduce emissions as cost effectively and efficiently as possible using a suite of technologies like new nuclear power, large hydro, and carbon capture and sequestration. Instead, they seem to always advocate for the opposite.

Minnesota’s renewable energy mandate is already harming every person in our state by increasing electricity prices. Xcel Energy’s recent bid to increase prices by $52 per year through the Renewable Energy Standard rider acts as one more regressive wind and solar tax, hurting low-income families and seniors the most. If we are going to build a stronger Minnesota for everyone, the foundation of our state should be lower energy prices, not higher ones.

SOURCE






Climate Expert Shreds Claims Made By Ocasio-Cortez, Thunberg In Congressional Testimony

Michael D. Shellenberger, President of Environmental Progress, ripped the far-left extremist rhetoric parroted by fringe activist Greta Thunberg and socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) during his testimony in front of the House Committee On Science, Space, and Technology on the science of climate change.

Without using their names, Shellenberger — who is a regular contributor in some of America’s largest publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Forbes — ripped apart many of the extreme claims made by Ocasio-Cortez and Thunberg.

Shellenberger began by highlighting his background, telling the Committee: “I am an energy analyst and environmentalist dedicated to the goals of universal prosperity, peace, and environmental protection. Between 2003 and 2009 I advocated for a large federal investment in renewables, many of which were made as part of the 2009 stimulus. And since 2013 I have advocated for the continued operation of nuclear plants around the world and thus helped prevent emissions from increasing the equivalent of adding 24 million cars to the road.”

“I also care about getting the facts and science right. I believe that scientists, journalists, and advocates have an obligation to represent climate science accurately, even if doing so reduces the saliency of our concerns,” Shellenberger continued.

“No credible scientific body has claimed climate change threatens the collapse of civilization much less the extinction of the human species. And yet some activists, scientists, and journalists make such apocalyptic assertions, which I believe contribute to rising levels of anxiety, including among adolescents, and worsening political polarization.”

Shellenberger’s remarks are an apparent shot at Thunberg’s claim that “we are in the beginning of a mass extinction” and Ocasio-Cortez’ claim that “we have 10 years left to plan and implement a Green New Deal before cataclysmic climate disaster.”

“My colleagues and I have carefully reviewed the science, interviewed the individuals who make such claims, and written a series of articles debunking them,” Shellenberger continued. “In response, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change invited me to review its next Assessment Report, and Harper Collins will publish our research findings this June.”

“While climate change may make some natural disasters more frequent and extreme, the death toll from extreme events could and should continue to decline, as it did over the last century by over 90 percent, even as the global population quadrupled,” Shellenberger continued. “Does that mean we shouldn’t worry about climate change? Of course not. Policymakers routinely take action on non-apocalyptic problems. And the risk of crossing unknown tipping points rises with higher temperatures.”

It’s important to note that Shellenberger is not a climate change denier, rather, he looks at what the science says and does not over-exaggerate scientific findings to advance a political agenda.

Shellenberger noted that the most important measure that governments need to undertake in order to reduce climate change “is the expanded use of nuclear energy.”

“Thanks in part to decades of public and private investment in fracking, natural gas is today cheap and abundant and thus needs little in terms of new public policy,” Shellenberger continued. “Solar and wind energy are popular but their inherent unreliability, large land use requirements, and large materials requirements mean they make electricity expensive, have large environmental impacts, and are inherently limited in their capacity to replace fossil fuels.”

“The U.S. invented nuclear energy for civilian use in the 1950s and yet over three-quarters of new nuclear reactors globally are being built by the Chinese or Russians,” Shellenberger continued. “Everyone recognizes that for the US to compete in building nuclear plants abroad we must build them at home and yet electric utilities may close half of America’s nuclear plants over the next two decades.”

Shellenberger noted the following must happen to implement a “Green Nuclear Deal,” which Shellenberger noted is important national security, the economy, and the environment:

First, there must be a significant program of domestic nuclear power plant construction to give US firms the experience they need to compete abroad.

Second, the president must be directly involved in selling foreign leader on US technology, just as President Eisenhower did in the 1950s, and Presidents Xi and Putin are doing today.

Third, the US must offer competitive financing for such foreign plant construction.

And fourth, the construction of nuclear plants abroad must be centralized under one or two entities at most, as the US did with General Electric and Westinghouse in the 1950s, and as China and Russia are doing with their state-owned firms today.

SOURCE





Thank God for tide gauges

Climate activists are spruiking phony sea level rise data

Between 1764 and 1767 William Hutchison, a mariner who was then Harbour Master at Liverpool in England, carefully recorded the times and heights of high tide at the Liverpool Old Dock. In the 19th Century the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, that was to become the Liverpool Observatory, established state-of-the-art tidal stations along the nearby Mersey Estuary. In 1929 this Observatory merged with the Tidal Institute at the Liverpool University and this was to become a world-famous centre for sea level research. Today the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) maintains a database of tide gauge data from all over the world.

After the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change was formed in 1988 successive IPCC technical committees carefully examined the PSMSL tide gauge data as the computer climate models were predicting the acceleration of sea level rise. After all, a discovery of sea level acceleration would provide additional evidence of increased global warming due to rising carbon dioxide levels and proof of anthropogenic climate change.

Alas! Alas! There was almost a level of disappointment in the early IPCC reports. Despite all their efforts the committees in 1990 (13 experts), 1995 (24 experts) and 2001 (36 experts) stated that they could find no acceleration of sea level rise in the 20th century despite the rise of CO2 during that time. ‘There is no firm evidence of acceleration in sea level rise during this century’, said the IPCC Report of 1990 (Chapter 9, p.262).

All of this was to change in 2007 and the scientific mess left by that 2007 IPCC sea level committee is still with us today. The panel now numbered 70 scientists. The Head Coordinators were Dr Bindoff (University of Tasmania) and Dr Jurgen Willebrand (Leibnitz Institute of Marine Science).This was the first IPCC meeting when satellite-based sea level rise data were available. The first sea level satellite (Topex – Poseidon) was launched in 1992 and replaced by the Jason 1 satellite in 2001. The satellites were showing sea level rise around 30 cm per 100 years while the tide gauges examined at earlier IPCC meetings showed a much lower sea level rise of 15-18 cm per 100 years.

Without any detailed analysis of the discrepancy between tide gauge data and satellite data, this IPCC committee concluded the satellite data was more reliable. This was a false ‘eureka’ moment with a spurious conclusion that the higher readings of the satellite were proof that sea level rise throughout the 20th Century had suddenly changed from a steady rate of 15-18 cm/100 years to a rate of 30 cm/100 years in the 1990s. This interpretation was made without any detailed review of the reliability of tide gauge data from all over the Earth and technical altimetry problems in a satellite system; a system where a one millimetre of error in its 1,366 km orbital distance from the Earth’s surface translated to a sea level rise error of 10 cm in 100 years!

The sea level debate became an even larger can of worms in 2018. The University of Colorado, which manages the Jason satellites on contract to NASA, reported that not only had there been no acceleration of sea level rise in the satellite data there had been a deceleration in the last decade (2008-2018); so even the satellite data had not been able to detect acceleration of sea level! It was proposed that a cooling event due to the 1991 volcanic eruption of Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines had delayed the sea level acceleration that would have eventuated by 2018 but would still emerge from the noise of internal climate variability in the coming decade barring another major volcanic eruption.

This lack of sea level rise acceleration was consistent with a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association report in 2016 on 200 tide gauges from the east and west coasts of the USA and from some Atlantic and Pacific islands. The US report showed there was no acceleration of sea level in these records. So two methods with vastly different results still showed no sea level acceleration! It was now crystal clear that the reports of no sea level acceleration (IPCC reports of 1900, 1995 and 2001) were correct and that the reports of sea level acceleration (IPCC reports of 2007 and 2014) were based on false logic; the spurious by-product of differences between two measuring systems.

The technical altimetry problems with the satellite system were eventually exposed in 2012 when NASA reported that there was a level of error that contaminated climatological data records, such as measurements of sea level height from altimetry missions. Consequently, NASA proposed to ditch the flawed Jason satellite system in favour of a new system called GRASP, or Geodetic Reference Antennae in Space. Unfortunately, its budget has never been approved.

So where are we today? The higher sea level rise estimates of the flawed satellite system are those most frequently quoted and fit with the many catastrophic climate scenarios. The United Nations’ climate Conference of the Parties in Madrid in December 2019, for example, quoted these higher sea level rise measurements and ignored the more reliable lower sea level rise estimates based on thousands of tide gauges. In Australia some scientists and engineers are still using the higher and dodgy satellite sea level rise data as a ‘prudential’ benchmark for coastal policies and have even adjusted tide gauge data upwards to the satellite data.

In 2014, for example, an engineering report for two NSW councils, Shoalhaven City and Eurobodalla, adjusted the Sydney Fort Denison tide gauge data, which showed a sea level rise less than 10 cm per 100 years, to the satellite measurements of 30 cm per 100 years. This absurd 300+ per cent upward adjustment of real tide gauge data was called a ‘linear fit’ (whatever that means!).

How can recent scientific articles published in ‘peer-reviewed’ literature stridently announce to the scientific community and the world media accelerated ice loss into the ocean from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets when there is no corresponding acceleration of sea level rise due to that ‘extra ice’. These articles tinged with panic do not make sense. The lack of any evidence of sea level acceleration in the PSMSL tide gauge data, the NOAA tide gauge data or even in the flawed NASA satellite data shows that these articles are either biased or based on insufficient data derived from flawed ice mass measurement methodologies. In contrast, the data from thousands of tide gauges clearly show no acceleration of sea level rise in the last 120 years.

SOURCE





Australia: Vital hazard reduction burns were stopped before Australia's deadly bushfire crisis due to residents complaining about poor air quality

Firefighters have revealed they were forced to cancel or delay hazard reduction burns in critical areas due to residents complaining about the smoke.

During the winter and autumn months the NSW Rural Fire Service deliberately burns parts of the bush to reduce the fuel load ahead of summer.

But several burns were stopped or cut short to keep air quality levels from deteriorating.

The elderly, infants and those with asthma often struggle with the thick smoke from the fires.

NSW RFS spokesman Inspector Ben Shepherd told the Daily Telegraph that public health was an important consideration.

'We speak with National Parks weekly during the hazard reduction season about the burns planned and the impact of smoke,' Mr Shepherd said.

'We look to see if we can change the lighting pattern to reduce the smoke impact.

Mr Shepherd said unpredictable weather can make directing the smoke very challenging.

Air quality issues played a key role in reducing the size of a burnoff in Bowen Mountain, an hour west of Sydney, which later lost several homes to the roaring Grose Valley fire.

More burns were reduced for air quality reasons in Putty, an area near Gospers Mountain which was consumed by a 'mega blaze' that went on to burn an area seven times the size of Singapore.

Other burns at Wiseman's Ferry, Ku-ring-gai Chase, Dural, Pennant Hills and Hawkesbury were postponed.

It comes after revelations that a Independent Hazard Reduction Audit Panel report recommended the government increase hazard reduction burning in 2013.

The report said that while it was not a solution, hazard reduction would be an critical tool in fighting bushfires going forward.

'Increases in fuel reduction will be required to counteract increasing risk that is likely to arise from climate change,' it said.

SOURCE 

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