And the smoke is causing the air quality in the nation to drop. However, it looks like this drop in air-quality isn¡¯t going to be limited to Australia.
Images from NASA¡¯s satellites predict that the bushfires have produced enough smoke that it can go across the Earth and come back to Australia. As per images on the satellite on January 8, the smoke had already travelled almost halfway around the Earth.
According to NASA, the smoke is resulting in the skies getting hazy, with South America witnessing colourful sunrises and sunsets -- something that isn¡¯t common in that region. The smoke has the worst impact on the neighbouring nation of New Zealand, that¡¯s just 1200 kilometres away.?
The blazing fire has burnt over 2000 homes, over 25 million acres of land -- larger than the size of the entire state of Bihar. It has also made it the driest year in the history of Australia, while completely surrounding cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide with smoke. It has also claimed the lives of a billion animals including Koalas and Kangaroos.?
According to NASA,? "The smoke is having a dramatic impact on New Zealand, causing severe air quality issues across the county and visibly darkening mountaintop snow." The entire nation is surrounded by dark clouds hovering over them.
Now, these clouds are so massive, that they are sort of behaving if you will. They have their own weather patterns -- different than regular clouds in the environment, according to NASA. The clouds have their own thunderstorms that have the potential to spark fires.?
Moreover, the storms are causing this smoke to go straight to the stratosphere -- reaching as high as 15 kilometres from the ground. This isn¡¯t good news as not only is it very close to the already-delicate and barely healing ozone layer, but the dust in the smoke can stop sunlight from falling on the surface, resulting in a hazy day.?