8
BAMOS
Jun 2020
Reflections
A climatologist remembers the fires
Mary Voice
About Mary Voice
Mary has had a lifelong interest in weather and climate, including
education in these areas. Mary’s career focused on the provision
of climate services to the Australian public and on international
cooperation in climate through the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO). In the Australian Bureau of Meteorology,
she was head of climate analysis and prediction services and
then head of National Climate Centre (NCC). Following this,
she has completed a number of consultancies. Mary has also
lectured on climate‐related subjects at La Trobe University and
the University of Melbourne, and served as AMOS President.
Thirty seven years have passed and yet I still
Recall the day I stood on a Melbourne hill
Recall the sense of heaviness and dread
Saw a setting sky black brown and red
Knew a tragedy was about to be.
On that "grey" day
Ash Wednesday.
Knew too that it would one day strike again
And yes it has, so
catastrophically.
Black Day—Black Saturday seemed so surreal
Of 46 degrees my skin’s first feel
Dreading then seeing Ash Wednesday times three
Such records I’d wish not repeat or re‐see.
I‘m unsettled all day fearing the worst
Smell smoke in the air
How severe?
Water saved from the morning shower eked out
On a rose
Was that crazy? Who knows.
And now one more decade is in retreat
Filled with hot debate amidst rising heat
As more bush is bankrupt by drought and fire
There’s a sense the weather is heading haywire.
Our summer continent is dried and fried
Menindee Lakes
Darling fish
And Queensland’s turn for fire a decade on
Precious forest
Pockets gone
No invasion of fronts, no cut‐off lows
And the Indian Ocean sits “back‐to‐front”
Rare Southern Ocean state brings further woes
Warming is bringing convergence of foes
The year hottest and driest on record
On and on
The fires long
Rolling from the north to south down the coast
Everyone tired
So much gone.
Word Cloud created by Mary Voice based on comments
and phrases heard over the latter months of 2019 and
first weeks of 2020.
Huge heat‐loading winds exert all their force
Still hotter, still stronger, still fiercer, still worse
Extract yet more heat from the continent’s heart
Heat waves roll longer, strong fires quicker start.
Our summers may now be different in kind
Hotter base
from which to race?
The system is primed just waiting a gun
Some times it fires
The bush explodes.
On from Ash Wednesday and what have we wrought?
NOW global warming plays a knife‐edge part
It needs to be expressed somehow and thought
about and recognised and seared into our heart
Our visions shape nations, build cities and homes
But a billion small acts
Forge a greenhouse
We are enmeshed in the ecology
We shape it
It shapes us.