Smoke From Australia's Bush Fires Is Killing The Atmosphere, Forming Deadly 17 Km High Clouds

It is no doubt that Australia's bushfires are one of the largest ongoing environmental disasters of our planet. Close to a billion animals feared dead, millions of square kilometres of land scorched, and thousands of people affected

And according to NASA's imaging satellites, it's already casting a huge smoky cloud as high as 17 kilometre into the Earth's planet atmosphere, spreading far and wide into the Pacific Ocean.

NASA's CALIPSO satellite provided data for a new animation based on the deadly after effects of the Australian bush fires, which shows that aerosols generated from the smoke has spread high into the atmosphere and far to the east over the Pacific Ocean.

They compared satellite data from Dec 31 to Jan 5, showing an animated graphic on how smoke and aerosol from the burning has resulted into massive cloud formation which stretches as high as 17 km into the earth's atmosphere.

In case you don't know, aerosols are tiny atmospheric particles that can cause air pollution, if it occurs in massive quantities. Furthermore, the intense heat over the Australian continent has resulted in the formation of large storms known as pyrocumulonimbus storms (pyroCbs), according to NASA.

¡°Large and numerous pyrocumulonimbus events are relatively rare ¡ª especially at this scale,¡± said Chip Trepte, CALIPSO¡¯s Project Scientist at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

Why are these storms so deadly? Because strong winds from these storms can fan fires into raging infernos. There have been more than 20 firestorms just in the past week, according to NASA. And there's no stopping more firestorms from emerging in the coming days, according to experts.

Even though it seems like there's no immediate respite for Australia from all the raging bush fires, we sure hope that the worst is already over and the world can contribute towards the rebuilding and rehabilitation of wildlife and people in that country.