The recent Canadian wildfires have been responsible for 1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions by 27 July, Chinese scientists have estimated, confirming the impact to be greater than the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by human activity.
Canada has been battered by a relentless summer of wildfires, with hundreds of blazes burning for weeks. Officials have warned that this could be the country’s worst wildfire season on record and that smoke would be a problem “all summer” – for both the US and Canada.
More than 5,000 fires burned in Canada by the end of July in an area totalling 129,800 sq km of land – an area roughly twice the size of Ireland. This is nearly 10 times more than the land burnt in the whole of 2022 (14,700 sq km).
The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre termed this scale of area ablaze in the fire season to be the largest on record.
According to figures from Environment and Climate Change Canada, the emissions from these wildfires are nearly double those of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions from human activity seen in 2021.
Scientists working with the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) used remote sensing to assess rapid emissions based on their intensity and the area destroyed in fire, reported the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
Emissions from these fires will have an “undeniable impact on global climate warming”, said Liu Zhihua, an expert in forest fires at the IAE and lead on the study.
The greenhouse effect of nitrous oxide and methane emitted from the fires is at par with 110 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, showed estimates by scientists.
On Wednesday, a total of 1,035 fires were reported burning in nearly every province and territory, with more than half raging out of control, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center.
The administration has roped in thousands of firefighters from around the world who have flown into Canada to support local crews, including from the US.
The wildfire situation remained serious but less dire to the south.
Some 67 large fires were burning across the US on Wednesday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, destroying 1,553 sq km in nine states, including Montana, Oregon, New Mexico, Wyoming, California and Idaho.
The climate crisis, caused by emissions from fossil fuels, is driving larger, more frequent and erratic wildfires around the world. As a result, countries across the globe are becoming hotter and drier, priming more of the landscape to burn.
