Canadian Wildfires Are Raging—3 Reasons Why That’s A Problem

It’s wildfire season in Canada. According to the Canadian government’s website, wildfires can happen at any time of the year, but the greatest amount of activity tends to fall within the months of May to September. Such fires pose hazards for people and threaten property. Additionally, associated risks are not always confined to Canada’s borders. As we enter what Canadians also refer to as “forest fire” season, there are three big concerns (among many) worth highlighting.

Intense Fires Are Already Happening, And It’s Too Early

Already this spring, large and intense wildfires have been evident in British Columbia and nearby regions of western Canada. Reuters reported on May 13 that, “The largely evacuated town of Fort Nelson in British Columbia is in the line of one of the season's first major wildfires that have spread to 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) across Western Canada.” In addition to the fires, air quality was degraded by smoke plumes in five Canadian provinces as well as the northern tier of the U.S.

Wildfire activity in this region typically ramps up in coverage and intensity much later in the summer. According to the NASA Earth Observatory website, “To the north of Fort Nelson, several other large fires each charred tens of thousands of hectares... these fires were listed as ‘holdover’ blazes that likely smoldered beneath the snow all winter before reemerging, according to data posted by the British Columbia Wildfire Service.”

Persistent Drought

Holdover blazes are an appropriate transition to my second big concern. The region is experiencing persistent drought. The NASA Earth Observatory website goes on to say, “Such fires lingered in vegetation that had been parched by a multi-year drought, classified as extreme by the North American Drought Monitor.” These fires are coming on the heels of the 2023 season, which Canada’s government called, “The most destructive ever recorded,” even before the season was over. Check out some of the numbers the government posted on its website last September:

• Over 6,132 fires burned 16.5 million hectares of land, an area larger than the country of Greece.
• By the middle of July, 29 mega-fires, defined as exceeding 100,000 hectares, had occurred.

As a reference point, roughly 2.5 million hectares of land is typically burned in an “average” year. Speaking about the 2023 season, Yan Boulanger, a research scientist in forest ecology at Natural Resources Canada, said, “The word ‘unprecedented’ doesn’t do justice to the severity of the wildfires in Canada this year... From a scientific perspective, the doubling of the previous burned area record is shocking.”

The Climate Change Fingerprint

The third big concern is about the omnipresent fingerprint of climate change. As context, Canada’s temperature has steadily increased in recent decades (1.9 degrees Celsius of warming from 1948 to 2022). Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau posted on the platform X, “Wildfire season is now a reality in Canada. Our climate is changing, and it’s a question of how — not if — we deal with it. We’re working with firefighters, like Chief Brolund in West Kelowna, to keep communities informed, prepared, and supported every step of the way.”

A study by the World Weather Attribution group noted that, “Climate change made the cumulative severity of Québec’s 2023 fire season to the end of July around 50% more intense, and seasons of this severity at least seven times more likely to occur.” Using an index that identifies fire weather conditions, the 2023 study went on to conclude that, “Peak fire weather conditions like that experienced this year (2023) is at least twice as likely, and the intensity has increased by about 20% due to human-induced climate change.” The combination of warming temperatures, decreasing humidity and low precipitation is an unfavorable recipe.

So what does the data say about conditions in Canada? A 2019 study published in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research demonstrated that large fires have been growing in size over the past 50 or so years. The results also found that fire season has been starting about one week earlier and ending a week later.

Hopefully, a shifting weather pattern will bring some temporary relief in the coming days, but the signal for the 2024 season is ominous. With the El Niño pattern shifting to La Niña, Professor Hossein Bonakdari, an expert at the University of Ottawa, raised another point. In a university press release from earlier this year, he said, “British Columbia may experience drier-than-normal conditions, heightening wildfire risks, while Alberta faces concerns about drought and potential late-season wildfires.”

It is important to remember that it is not “either/or.” When it comes to the narrative about natural variability and anthropogenic impacts, the right answer usually involves “and.”