Now, a new study shows how these fires create a vicious cycle that contributes to climate change and makes wildfire season worse. According to the study released today, Canadian wildfires will emit 647 million tonnes of carbon in 2023. nature. If the fires were a country, they would be the fourth largest emitter, behind China, the United States and India. The massive emissions from the fires show how human activities are pushing natural ecosystems to places that make our climate efforts more difficult.
“It’s just crazy that this is happening over such a large area of Canada and continuing all summer long,” said Brendan Byrne, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and lead author of the study.
Byrne said looking back at the climate record, it’s clear how last year’s weather conditions contributed to an unusually brutal fire season. 2023 was particularly warm and dry, both of which allowed the fires to spread faster and burn more intensely.
Some areas were particularly notable for the fires, with parts of Quebec, a typically wet region in eastern Canada, receiving half-normal rainfall. Those fires produced smoke that drifted down the U.S. East Coast. But overall, the most important thing about the 2023 fire season was how widespread the conditions were that favored fires, Byrne said.
While climate change doesn’t directly cause fires, researchers have traced hot, dry conditions that exacerbate them to human-caused climate change. According to a 2023 analysis by World Weather Attribution, extreme fire conditions in eastern Canada are more than twice as likely to occur due to climate change.
And in turn, the fires are releasing massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. By combining satellite images of burned areas with measurements of the gases released, Byrne and his team were able to calculate the total carbon released into the atmosphere more accurately than estimates based on imagery alone.
