Smoke from Australian fires rose higher into the ozone layer than ever before
Australia’s most recent wildfire season was so severe that smoke from the fires reached new heights in the atmosphere — and showed some very weird behavior while it was up there. A particularly intense series of bushfires in southeastern Australia from December 29 to January 4 spurred the formation of huge pyrocumulonimbus, or pyroCb, clouds (SN: 10/22/10). Those fire-fueled thunderstorms launched between 300,000 and 900,000 metric tons of smoke into the stratosphere, which was more than any seen from a previous inferno. One especially large, long-lasting smoke plume rose to a record altitude while spinning and wrapping itself in rotating winds. Those winds have never been observed around similar plumes, researchers report online May 30 in Geophysical Research Letters. This vast puff of smoke, which still hasn’t fully dissipated, spanned roughly 1,000 kilometers — about the width of Montana. That made it one of the largest, if not the largest, wildfire smoke plume that satellites have ever seen in the stratosphere, says atmospheric scientist Jessica...