The deadly bushfires in Australia have now crossed into the new year and the smoke from the fires has crossed over 1700 km to New Zealand. These fires are now the worst on record and also the deadliest. Look at the image below from the Tasman Glacier on the South Island in New Zealand. The sky is thick with smoke and there are many reports that you can even smell the fires burning over 1500 km away as well.

Here is the latest flyby from the Terra Satellite below. You can see the bushfire smoke crossing New Zealand and the plume easily extends for over 3000 kilometers!

Many Australians still believe every major scientific body on Earth is wrong about the greenhouse warming of the planet. While you cannot blame any one event on the steady warming, the climate models do show that Australia will see more and more of this kind of weather. I’ll bet that is getting uncomfortably hot politically in the Prime Minister’s residence in Canberra as well.

Note: Brian Kahn at Gizmodo has a related post showing how the ice has melted on Earth over the past ten years. As I have said before, images are very powerful and they will often produce anger when they conflict with someone’s entrenched worldview. So are graphs, (Just ask Michael Mann at Penn. State.) so it does not surprise me he has reported getting death threats after posting them.