“These unprecedented fires are an indication that a much-feared future under climate change may have arrived earlier than predicted.” That’s bushfire experts Ross Bradstock and Rachael Helene Nolan, discussing the conflagration presently consuming Australia.

At the time of writing, out of control fires still burn on a million hectares or so, with their containment potentially taking months. The smoke from New South Wales forms a column visible from space. The area affected totals four times the land that burned in all of 2018, even though this year’s fire season has barely begun. Three people have died; more than a thousand properties have been destroyed.

Australia, the driest continent on the planet (other than Antarctica) has long been recognized as especially vulnerable to a warming climate. As far back as 2003, a report issued on previous Victorian fires explained that “climate change throughout the present century is predicted to lead to increased temperatures and, with them, a heightened risk of unplanned fire.”