Drought and heat fuel unprecedented wildfires in Canada – 05/10/2023 – Environment

Dry vegetation, record temperatures and strong winds: this accumulation of phenomena explains why Alberta, in western Canada, is experiencing forest fires of unprecedented magnitude this year.

The extent of the fires and their earlier-than-normal appearance illustrate the impacts of climate change, scientists say.

Due to its geographic location, Canada is warming up faster than the rest of the world. These phenomena, therefore, are more and more likely to be repeated frequently.

“In total, 390,000 hectares have already been burned. That’s ten times more than a normal year, and we’re still getting started,” said Danielle Smith, prime minister of Alberta, where a state of emergency has been declared.

“It’s an extraordinary, unprecedented event, so I believe we have to be prepared for the future,” she told the press on Tuesday (9).

Nearly 30,000 people have been ordered out of their homes as hundreds of firefighters work to control the blaze.

“It is an exceptional year in that the accumulation of burned areas is very fast, as well as the number of very large fires at the same time,” Yan Boulanger, a forest fire specialist at the Canadian Ministry of Natural Resources, told AFP.

The vast majority of fires occur by human action, caused by cigarette butts, bonfires that were not properly extinguished and, sometimes, malicious acts, he listed.

The Dangerous Month of May

Spring is a risky time for wildfires in this part of Canada: there is no more snow on the ground and the plants have yet to regrow.

“We ended up with very dry undergrowth and trees that are very flammable because they don’t have leaves,” Boulanger said. “Conditions in recent weeks have been very dry.”

“This is always a dangerous time,” said Terri Lang, a meteorologist at the Ministry of the Environment.

In early May, there was a meteorological phenomenon that “brought really abnormal heat and drought conditions to the province for that moment,” the expert told AFP.

A high pressure spike prevented the arrival of rains and kept the heat, resulting in the breaking of several temperature records in the region.

In Edmonton, the provincial capital, thermometers reached 28.9°C on May 1st, an all-time high since 26.7°C in 1931. And, on the following Thursday, they reached 32.2°C in Fort McMurray in the north.

Added to this were winds favored by temperature differences between the cold in the north and the heat in the south. “It was the perfect storm,” Lang said.

Boulanger said that “if conditions remain extreme, it could last for weeks or months”.

The forest specialist recalled that, in May 2016, the gigantic fire in Fort McMurray, a city known for its huge oil sands industrial complex, took almost a year to be put out.

More common with global warming

Diana Stralberg, a researcher at the Ministry of Natural Resources in Edmonton, explains that human-caused climate change is extending the burning season and causing “extreme fire conditions” to occur more frequently.

“Although fire is a natural process of forest renewal, the most frequent fires, as well as fires followed by droughts, can interrupt the regeneration of conifers” and cause the reduction of forest areas in favor of pastures, he told AFP. climate expert.

Gradually, the forest shrinks, with direct consequences for dozens of species of migratory birds and reindeer.

“Models to predict future fire and vegetation conditions have shown that under high-level warming scenarios, up to 50% of Alberta’s boreal forest could be at risk of becoming grassland by the end of the 21st century,” Stralberg said.

The increase in fires also means large emissions of greenhouse gases, which further intensifies climate change, in a mechanism that researchers call a “feedback loop between fires and climate”.