Large areas of southern Australia at higher risk of bushfires this summer

Posted 6 minutes ago

Bushfire researchers say vast swathes of Australia face above average chances of grass fires and bushfires this summer, after months of above average temperatures.

The Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre has released its seasonal bushfire outlook for the south of the country.

It found recent warm weather, coupled with generous rainfalls has led to a build up of dry fuel in grasslands and forests.

The last 12 months have been the warmest on record, according to the weather bureau, and most states recorded their warmest winter since records began.

Large parts of southern Australia, especially along the east and west coasts extending inland, face above normal fire potential this fire season.

However, fire authorities said the at-risk area is not as extensive as last season, when the danger zone extended right across the south of the country.

Victoria

The risk of fire is above average throughout Victoria’s heartland and in the east, including east Gippsland.

“Forests are expected to be more flammable than normal due to the lingering effect of last summer’s extreme dryness and heat,” Bushfire CRC’s outlook said.

“Strong drying of soils and fuels has also commenced in east Gippsland, which may result in early bushfire activity if this trend continues.”

Fire authorities say spring rainfall patterns will dictate the severity of the fire risk and grass growth is being closely monitored.

“Certainly western, central and north-east Victoria would appear at this stage to be the highest risk areas,” said Victoria’s Fire Services Commissioner Craig Lapsley.

“We have got areas that are forested and grassland environments that will be significantly impacted by the spring rains which will see growth and which brings additional grass in the grasslands that will dry out.

“The summer months are the critical periods for Victorians to be focused on fire.”

A normal fire season is expected in the Mallee, west and south Gippsland and coastal parts of south-west Victoria.

New South Wales

With the exception of north-eastern coastal areas and the far west, NSW is expecting above average bushfire conditions this season.

Above average rainfall over the past three years has led to a build up of grass fuel across parts of the state.

The Rural Fire Service says it has already had to deal with a significant number of bushfires after one of the state’s warmest winters on record.

The areas of most concern include the Tablelands, the Upper Hunter and west of the Great Dividing Range.

Forested areas on the central and southern NSW coast and ranges have been drying out due to below average rainfall since July.

“The areas around Tamworth and Taree and the Upper Hunter, as well as some parts of the southern part of the state around Shoalhaven, have brought forward the bushfire danger commencement to the beginning of September so obviously they’re seeing an increase in fire activity already,” said RFS Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers.

“If you have a prolonged period of warming it tends to dry out the fuels more and it makes the fuels more readily burn.

“Fires take hold quicker and obviously it’s more difficult then for brigades to suppress.

“Particularly if there’s some of those extreme temperature days like we saw in the last summer, where we saw some records broken in temperature, that’s obviously of concern to us too, particularly if it’s very dry.”

The far north coast and north coast are also at a higher risk of fire. But the risk could be eased if there is above average rainfall.

Normal fire conditions are likely in the far west of the state.

South Australia

 

Above normal fire potential is predicted in the North West Pastoral and Flinders districts due to abundant rain and the growth of grass fuels.

The rest of the state, including the agricultural areas, can expect normal levels of fire activity.

The Bushfire CRC outlook raises concerns about adequate fire-fighting resources in SA.

“The North West Pastoral and Flinders districts may pose resourcing issues this fire season, as was experienced in the North West Pastoral district last season, where firefighters and aircraft were committed for lengthy periods,” it said.

Tasmania

Normal fire activity is expected across Tasmania this season, but small areas in the Derwent Valley and the mid-east coast are currently drier than usual.

Most of the state has experienced average or above average soil moisture, reducing fire activity for the moment.

But it also provides ideal conditions for growth, which may be a trigger for large fires in the new year if it dries out.

Fire ecologist Professor David Bowman, from the University of Tasmania, says people need to stay alert.

“If we had heatwaves like we saw last summer in Tasmania we can have very quickly evolving fire weather conditions which go from fairly benign to quite extreme,” he said.

“I would urge everybody who that’s in bushland settings to be very, very conscious of bushfires.”

He said fuel management is a critical tool, but not the only tool.

“As we’re going into a warmer world we will be looking at other options that will be probably more targetted vegetation management, clearing, creating safer spaces around houses, maybe changing the vegetation types, changing the vegetation types, changing the sorts of houses we have,” he said.

Western Australia

High rainfall across the mid west and desert regions has led to high rate of grass growth and high fuel loads, and consequently, above average fire potential.

Above normal bushfire potential is also forecast in the south west.

A normal fire season is expected for the Wheatbelt, the Nullarbor, east of the Fraser Range.

Queensland

An above normal fire potential has been predicted for areas between Dalby and Warwick, south to the NSW border and west to Goondiwindi.

Also at a heightened risk is the area to the west between Wallumbilla and Dulacca, south to St George and an area extending from the Sunshine Coast hinterland, into the western areas of the Wide Bay Burnett region.

Despite large-scale fires in the northern and western areas of Queensland during the last fire season, there are still vast areas with moderate to abundant grassland fuels and low stock levels that could experience large-scale, fast-running grass fires.

Northern Australia

The seasonal outlook for the north of Australia is released mid-year, ahead of the dry season.

This includes the Northern Territory, as well as northern Western Australia and northern Queensland.

Topics: fires, safety, weather, australia, act, nt, qld, sa, tas, vic, wa, nsw

Increased greenhouse gases and aerosols have similar effects on rainfall

Verizon, Vodafone to announce $130 billion U.S. deal

(Reuters) – Verizon Communications and Vodafone plan to announce a $130 billion deal on Monday that will give the U.S. telecom giant complete control of Verizon Wireless, subject to final board approval, people familiar with the matter said.

Vodafone said in a statement late on Sunday it was in advanced talks with Verizon to sell its 45 percent stake in the joint venture for $130 billion, comprising cash and common shares, but that there was no certainty an agreement would be reached.

“A further announcement will be made as soon as practicable,” it said of the deal to exit the largest mobile operator in the U.S..

Under the terms of the proposed agreement, Vodafone would get $60 billion in cash, $60 billion in Verizon stock, and an additional $10 billion from smaller transactions that will take the total deal value to $130 billion, two of the people familiar with the matter said on Saturday.

To fund the cash portion of the deal, Verizon has lined up as much as $65 billion in financing from four banks: JPMorgan Chase & Co, Morgan Stanley, Barclays Plc and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, they said. The banks have committed to the financing which is expected be split evenly among the four, two people said.

A full announcement of the terms is expected to come after the stock market closes in London on Monday, after the board of Verizon meets earlier in the day to vote on the proposed transaction, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Vodafone’s board was scheduled to meet on Sunday to approve the deal, the people said. Both groups declined to comment.

If the deal is concluded, it will end one of the longest-running corporate standoffs, which has at times seen both partners seek to buy out the other in times of weakness. For Verizon, it means that it no longer has to share the billions in cash generated by Verizon Wireless.

On the Vodafone side, Chief Executive Vittorio Colao will get a war chest of cash to reward shareholders and potentially carry out acquisitions to strengthen the group’s European and emerging market operations.

All the people asked not to be identified because the matter is not public.

HIGHLY PROFITABLE

An agreement over Verizon Wireless would mark the culmination of on-again, off-again discussions going as far back as 2004, when Vodafone bid for AT&T Inc’s wireless business in a move that would have required it to shed its Verizon Wireless stake.

The British company lost that bid and has since held on to the Verizon Wireless stake for its exposure to the highly profitable U.S. wireless market, saying it would only sell if Verizon offered a price that was more valuable to its shareholders than the status quo.

At $130 billion, it would be the third-largest corporate deal of all time.

A top 10 Vodafone investor told Reuters last week that $130 billion would be “a good price” that shareholders would welcome.

“Colao’s done a good job over the last five years. He’s done well not to have sold the U.S. sooner. There were people calling for him to sell the U.S. business three or four years ago and clearly it’s been the right thing to do not to do that because it’s grown in value hugely over that time.

“Taking the big picture, I think the management has done a good job and if they get the mooted price for Verizon they’ll be treated as heroes.”

Talks picked up in earnest a few weeks ago, as Verizon grew concerned that its window of opportunity was closing, with interest rates due to rise and its own stock price declining.

That prompted Verizon to raise the offer price from the $100 billion it had initially floated to around $130 billion, sources have said.

Even after the bump in price, the deal is expected to be accretive to Verizon’s earnings, one of the sources said.

Another hindrance to a deal has been the possibility of a huge tax bill for Vodafone from the sale, based on Verizon Wireless’ massive growth since it was established. But the sources said the deal would be structured in such way that Vodafone’s tax bill could be cut to around $5 billion.

A deal would add to the spate of telecom acquisitions this year in Europe and the U.S.. Most recently, Japan’s SoftBank Corp took control of Sprint Nextel Corp, the No. 3 U.S. wireless provider, in a $21.6 billion deal that could make the U.S. market more competitive.

Although overall M&A activity remains lower than last year at this time, the telecom sector has been a bright spot of deal-making. According to Thomson Reuters data, telecom deals were up 36 percent this year, with 358 deals worth $60.9 billion, not including the potential Verizon-Vodafone deal.

(Reporting by Soyoung Kim, Michelle Sierra, Sophie Sassard, Kate Holton, Chris Vellacott and Sinead Carew. Writing by Kate Holton. Editing by Jon Boyle)

The scuttlebutt (talk around the water cooler) says that an impending war with Syria will endanger the world’s oil supply. Many people are assuming that this is because Syria’s oil will go offline to the rest of the world. This is a mistaken impression. Syria’s oil production is only estimated at about 50,000 bopd. All of this is refined domestically. It is true that prior to sanctions it produced about 370,000 bopd (about 0.4% of the world’s oil supply). However, the sanctions have been in place for some time (since 2011 – 2012). Plus Syria only exported 150,000 bopd before the sanctions. In other words Syria is not now supplying the outside world with any oil; and it has not been for a year or more. In fact Syria is a net importer of oil products. A war in Syria by itself would have NO IMPACT on the world’s oil supplies.

Some worry that the Syrians would send missiles to destroy neighboring countries’ oil fields. However, this seems unlikely. Iraq is a near neighbor. However, if Syria attacked Iraq, it might find itself facing a massive U.S./UN force able to stage its offensive safely from Iraq. Attacking Iraq would be strategically foolish. Iran and Lebanon (at least Hezbollah militants) are Syria’s closest allies, so they are out. Israel would counter attack strongly, so a direct, unjustified attack on Israel is unlikely. Saudi Arabia is well armed with U.S. technology. Plus it would again allow staging of U.S./UN forces if it was attacked directly. This only leaves Jordan, Turkey, and Kuwait that could be attacked. Syria probably would like to maintain at least a semblance of friendly relations with Jordan and Turkey, which share long borders with Syria. Kuwait probably falls into the same category as Iraq. All told, unless the governing body of Syria goes completely insane, they will not try to destroy neighbors’ oil infrastructure, especially since they are current net importers. Neighboring countries may be the cheapest place for Syrians to get oil.