Fires in Canada already break a record and are set to get worse – 06/28/2023 – Environment

Fires in Canada broke an all-time record, with more than 77,900 km² of forest burned in 2023. The number is the highest in the last 40 years and was reached long before the end of the fire season, which runs until September.

The area is equivalent to that of Panama (75,320 km²) or almost 50 times that of the city of São Paulo (1,521 km²).

According to the European atmospheric monitoring service Copernicus, the fires have already emitted 160 million tons of carbon, the highest rate since monitoring began in 2003. The number is equivalent to the total emissions of the Philippines, a country with a population of 113.9 million people in 2021.

The smoke returned to cloud the sky of major Canadian cities this Sunday (25). In Montreal, in the province of Quebec, the air quality recorded was the worst among the world’s big cities, according to IQAir, which monitors pollution around the globe.

Canada’s Ministry of the Environment urged residents in several regions of the province to avoid outdoor activities and recommended the use of masks. Outside events such as concerts and sports competitions have been cancelled.

The pollution caused by the fire also crossed the Atlantic and reached Europe a day later.

To the Reuters news agency, Copernicus scientist Mark Parrington said that, throughout the week, it is possible for the sky to become cloudy on the European continent, dyeing the sunset orange. Despite this, the forecast is that the smoke will stay at a higher altitude, so it is unlikely that the air quality will be affected.

This Tuesday (27), there were 487 active fires in Canada, 259 of which are out of control.

“We are already seeing one of the worst bushfire seasons on record and we must prepare for a long summer,” Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault said in a statement in early June.

what is burning

The flames are reaching the boreal forest, which covers most of Canada and is mostly made up of different types of conifers (such as pines).

“The diversity of trees is much lower than in Brazilian forests, and there may be hundreds of hectares of black spruce, mainly”, explains botanist Sam Flake, a researcher at the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University, in the U.S.

“This type of forest covers a vast area that is sparsely populated and difficult for firefighters to access, which has made it difficult to control fires”, he assesses.

Fires are a natural part of the boreal forest ecosystem, so many species have adaptations to help them resist after being hit by flames.

Black spruce, for example, is very flammable, but has cones that store seeds to release after a fire. But even this type of plant does not withstand frequent fires. “This tree prefers to burn every 50 or 100 years, otherwise it will be replaced by other species,” says Flake.

Even so, this does not mean that the boreal forest is burning “by itself”.

“The majority of fires are still caused by humans in Canada. But there is a higher proportion [de fogo] by natural causes, such as lightning, than in places like Brazil and other areas of humid forests”, points out James MacCarthy, researcher at Global Forest Watch, a tool of the non-governmental organization WRI (World Resources Institute).

The role of the climate crisis

The climate is a factor that contributes to the occurrence of large fires, since the fire depends on specific conditions to spread more easily: dry weather, high temperatures and wind. With climate change, this type of scenario has become more frequent in forest regions, leading to more fires.

“What we’re seeing is that there have been more intense, more frequent and larger fires that ecosystems [boreais] they didn’t adapt throughout evolution”, MacCarthy points out. “So, even though fire is natural, the types of fires that we are seeing today are not natural.”

Flake also points out that the fires that are happening now, which started earlier than normal, were caused by a very hot and dry spring in the northern hemisphere. “These conditions will almost certainly become more common in the future,” he says.

The current level, with tens of thousands of square kilometers burned, was something reached at the end of the fire season in previous years. Therefore, the expectation is that 2023 will still have three more months of fires, aggravating the situation.

“Some studies have shown that fire seasons have increased over the last 50 years and are now about 20% longer than before 2000,” says MacCarthy.

Global Forest Watch recorded an increase in forest areas burned worldwide, especially in the last decade, but it was the forests in Canada and Russia that burned the most.

“The IPCC [painel científico das Nações Unidas para as mudanças climáticas] has already shown that the boreal regions are warming faster than the rest of the planet. This is one of the reasons why we are seeing impacts in these areas in particular”, explains the expert.

Impact on carbon emissions

In addition to suffering the effects of climate change, becoming more frequent, forest fires are also on the other side of the equation: as they release a lot of carbon, they exacerbate global warming.

While in tropical forests, like those in Brazil, most of the carbon is stored above ground, in the branches and trunk, in boreal forests the opposite happens, with most of the stock in the soil.

“But as we see the intensity, number and frequency of wildfires increase in boreal forests, it is being burned [o material que está] deeper in the ground and that releases more carbon,” says MacCarthy.

In March, a study showed that fires in boreal forests are emitting ever-increasing amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂).

The burning of this type of vegetation in Eurasia and North America in 2021 released a record 1.76 billion tons of CO₂ —representing 23% of all global carbon emissions from fires.

“That study looked at the 2021 fire season, but this one is likely to be even worse,” says Flake.

(With information from AFP and Reuters.)

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}