Canada: Wildfire Season Most Severe on Record
Canada is officially experiencing the worst fires in its history, burning more than 8.1M hectares (20M acres). This is 21 times greater than the average over the past 10 years, with 483 current wildfires across Canada generating record levels of carbon emissions.
Facts
- Canada is officially experiencing the worst fires in its history, burning more than 8.1M hectares (20M acres). This is 21 times greater than the average over the past 10 years, with 483 current wildfires across Canada generating record levels of carbon emissions.1
- This year's wildfire tally has already surpassed the entire year of 1995, with the peak of the season still to come.2
- The carbon stored in Canada's northern boreal forest is approximately 200B tons — on par with decades worth of carbon emissions on a global scale. As the forests burn, they become further vulnerable to new fires and negatively affect global warming.3
- Scientists have even observed instances of fire-generated thunderstorms in Canada this summer, a sign of fires burning at a high intensity.4
- As wildfires continue to burn in Canada, smoke has been plummeting into the US. The smoke has led to "significantly degraded air quality" throughout North America and even reached across the Atlantic to Europe.5
- Earlier in June, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau characterized Canada's 2023 wildfire season as "unprecedented."5
Sources: 1BBC News, 2Washington Post, 3Reuters, 4Axios, and 5ABC News.
Narratives
- Narrative A, as provided by Guardian. Climate change is wreaking havoc in Canada. Wildfires are becoming more intense and even speeding up global warming, creating a dangerous feedback loop. This year's fires have already broken all the records, releasing more than 600M tons of carbon dioxide since May — more than half of Canada's yearly emissions. This is a dangerous aspect of our current climate crisis.
- Narrative B, as provided by NBC. While climate change is likely a factor in these wildfires, the best way to deal with this is to design preventative measures to shrink their scope as much as possible. One potential solution is to turn dead trees into biomass energy before they ignite. Governments should invest in turning these trees into wood chips, which, besides preventing future fires, can also be burned and used to produce heat and electricity. Better forest management can go a long way in mitigating the worst of these fires.
