Study on blazing wildfires at the outeniqua pass in South Africa during the october/november 2018 period

Wildfires are starting to increase on a global scale due to a changing climate. These wildfires can destroy everything in their path and impact negatively on the environment, air quality and climate. On the October 28, 2018, a fire broke out in Outeniqua (33.75°S and 23.00°E), located in the Southern Cape coast of the Republic of South Africa (RSA). The wildfire destroyed vast amounts of vegetation and released large amounts of pollutants into the atmosphere. These wildfires were reported to being one of the biggest wildfires in RSA to date. Therefore, this study analysed the wildfire characteristics and underlying meteorological and environmental variables, as well as the emissions from the wildfires into the atmosphere. The results indicated large daily burned area (BA), peaking at 28 550 Ha/day on the 28th of October and 30 700 Ha/day on the 04th of November. This corresponds to two large ambient concentrations of particulate matter black carbon (BC) peaks of ~0.22 μg/m³ on 28 October and ~0.42 μg/m³ on November 04, 2018. These peaks agree with the peaks observed by the aerosol optical depth data. Moreover, the Fire Radiative Power (FRP) anomalies indicated that Outeniqua fires were category 3 to 5, thus showing that the fires were intense and can be regarded as disastrous. The results also showed lower precipitation, soil moisture (SM), and normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) throughout the year, depicting the prolonged drought conditions which are favourable to the spread of wildfires.