Pyrocene en · PROPN
Etymology
From pyro- + -cene, coined by American academic Stephen J. Pyne in 2016.
Meanings
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(uncountable) The period of the Holocene/Anthropocene in which climate change causes more frequent and intense wildfires.
But be warned: the full, hellish fury of the pyrocene has yet to arrive.
2021 August 28, Graham Lawton, “The dawn of the pyrocene”, in New Scientist, page 24:Instead of ice sheets, glaciers and periglacial environments adjacent to the ice, a Pyrocene manifests itself with fire-informed biotas, fire-starved biotas, hot spots where fire is the dominant energy source, peripyric landscapes where humans equipped with pyrotechnologies have reshaped the scene, and of course a warming atmosphere and unhinged climate that passes over the planet.
2019 November 20, Stephen J. Pyne, “The planet is burning”, in Aeon, archived from the original on 12 Apr 2023:The supercharged blazes of the Pyrocene are putting millions upon millions of people around the world directly at risk, and even larger populations indirectly at risk with smoke.
2020 January 3, Matt Simon, “Australia Is Blazing Into the Pyrocene—the Age of Fire”, in Wired:The insights gained by such research will be essential to manage animal populations in the Pyrocene.
2021 November, Dale G. Nimmo, Alexandra J. R. Carthey, Chris J. Jolly, Daniel T. Blumstein, “Welcome to the Pyrocene: Animal survival in the age of the megafire”, in Global Change Biology, volume 27, number 22:Those images of fire on fire are the raw footage of a planetary phase change, what might end up as a geologic era we could call the Pyrocene. They will continue until, as Shakespeare put it, they “consume the thing that feeds their fury.”
[2016 May 16, Stephen J. Pyne, “Welcome to the Pyrocene”, in Slate, →ISSN: