b'SURFACE WATERAMAZON & AUSTRALIAN FIRESWritten by Chris CushmanDespite the nearly 16,000 km (~10,000 miles)Wildfires have become more frequent and intense as distance between them, recent fires in the Amazona result of global climate change. These effects have rainforest and Australia are intimately linkedbeen realized in Australia, as record-breaking heat and by climate change. drought conditions have fueled devastating wildfires that burned through the beginning of 2020.Fires in the Amazon are almost always intentionally set by humans. Their goal is to clear swaths of the rainforestWhile slash and burn practices in the Amazon have for agricultural development, and this purposefuldirect implications for future global CO 2levels, damage to one of the worlds largest carbon sinks isthis is but one of the countless contributors to the contributing to increasingly dry climates around theclimate change effects felt in Australia. However, the world. The Amazon rainforest actively absorbs anrelationship between fires in the Amazon and Australia enormous amount of carbon that has been releaseddemonstrate how actions on one side of the planet can into the atmosphere. When the Amazon burns, itcause devastating consequences on the otherand transforms from being a carbon sink to a carbon source.shines a light on the complex, global nature of this environmental crisis. Photo:Bushfire smouldering inthe Australian Outback 6 MISSION: WATER'