Since September, at least 17.9 million acres of Australian land has burned and the situation is getting progressively worse each passing day.?
According to reports, the smoke from the massive Australian wildfires has crossed the South Pacific Ocean and was detected in parts of South America, nearly 14,484 km away.?
Reuters
The fires have taken a tragic toll on the population and killed at least 27 people and destroyed almost 2,000 homes.
The blazes turned skies orange and made breathing the air in Sydney as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes.?An estimated 1 billion animals have been lost and the fires might cause permanent damage to the ecosystem.?
According to reports, a?satellite known as GOES-16 covers?the Atlantic basin, and images clearly show smoke blowing over Chile and Argentina and into the Atlantic basin.??This smoke led to hazy skies over some areas?near the Chilean capital of Santiago.?
"The hotter the fire, the higher the smoke plume can penetrate into the atmosphere," said Heather Holmes, assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, and expert in air pollution in an interview with weather.com. "If the smoke is injected higher into the atmosphere, it will be transported farther."
Holmes also said the size of particles in plumes are important for determining how far they travel. "If you have really large ash particles, those drop out sooner. Smaller particles, including gases condensed into particles, can stay in the atmosphere longer."
The smoke from the bushfires pumped up thousands of feet in the air, is being fanned by the wind all the way to South Pacific which is 7,500 miles from eastern Australia to Chile and Argentina.
According to?Santiago Gassó, a NASA aerosol researcher, the?smoke covers roughly 38 million square kilometers (23 million square miles), an area the size of Russia, Canada, China, and as per his study it has also touched the Indian Ocean.
The fires are not just wreaking havoc in Australia, they also have serious consequences for people across the world. Australian authorities urged nearly a quarter of a million people to evacuate their homes and prepared military backup as soaring temperatures and erratic winds fanned bushfires across the east coast.?