Mental health crisis looms as disasters worsen, say experts

A strange orange morning dawned in New York City on Tuesday last week, the usually pale yellow sunlight filtered through a haze of smoke from

wildfires burning more than 1,000km north in Nova Scotia, Canada

.

The causes of the fires

that were spewing the smoke – which now regularly shrouds large swathes of North America, Australia and South-east Asia – may vary, but the underlying reality is that the warming planet has made them more frequent, widespread and intense.