Effects of climate change cause exceptional wave of fires in Canada

The smoke that chokes millions of people in North America for days it has been the result of 441 forest fires that are currently active in Canadaa figure much higher than normal due to the worst effects of the climate change.

Since January, the flames have burned 3.8 million hectares of forest and vegetation in Canada when the average figure in the last decade had been 250,000 hectares.

“Climate change has its role. This spring has been very dry in eastern Canada.” Kent Moore, professor of Physics at the University of Toronto who specializes in the study of meteorology and the climate crisis, explained to Efe this Thursday.

Hurricanes and dryness

Moore also points out in the specific case of Nova Scotia, which in recent days has experienced two unprecedented forest fires, the effects of Hurricane Fiona, which devastated that Atlantic Canada province in September 2022.

Fiona’s winds downed thousands of trees. “Those trees are now dead, they’re rotting and they’re basically more fuel for the flames.”explained the Canadian professor.

Of course, scientists have linked the increased intensity and number of Atlantic hurricanes to global warming.

But although the fires in Quebec and Ontario, in the eastern and central zone of Canada, are the ones that focus the public’s attention, because their smoke is the one that covers cities like New York, Washington and Philadelphia, in the US, and Toronto and Ottawa, in Canada, in western Canada the flames are even more intense.

Moore again points to the effects of the climate crisis. “In the fires in British Columbia and northern Alberta, climate change is also playing a role because it is bringing spring forward.”

early spring

That means that the heat waves that the region periodically suffers are also coming forward, and with them the forest fires.

It must be remembered that an extreme heat wave in late June and early July 2021, with temperatures reaching 49.6 degrees Celsius in the interior of British Columbia, caused the death of at least 619 people and forest fires that they completely destroyed several communities.

For this summer, the forecasts are worrying because spring is not being, as usual, a wet season, and the summer months are especially dry in Canada.

Moore also warned that this year it was Canada’s turn but that in the Russian roulette that the climate has turned into, next year those affected may be other regions in the upper part of the northern hemisphere. “Two years ago it was Siberia where serious forest fires broke out,” said.

Farewell to the mirror effect of the Arctic

Moore is also concerned about the effects of smoke from the fires on health because the particles that the wind carries to North American cities are especially microscopic and are deposited in the deepest areas of the lungs.

But even if the winds, which are now blowing south toward the more populated parts of North America, were to shift north to the arctic regions, the problems would not go away.

In that case, the particles would end up deposited in the Arctic, darkening the ice and removing some of the region’s ability to reflect solar radiation, which in turn would help accelerate global warming.

“What worries me the most is that we are seeing the effects of the increase in the average temperature of the planet of 1.1 degrees. And we are having trouble responding to its impact when the predictions are that we will reach 1.5 degrees in the next few years”, Moore concluded.

Source: EFE