2023-08-22 19:00:27
A study shows how human-induced climate change has increased the likelihood of unprecedented fires hitting Canada.
Canada has always been used to seasonal wildfires, but not one on the scale of the 2023 season. And for good reason: an attribution analysis, conducted by an international team of sixteen researchers, shows that climate change caused by human activities doubled the risk of the weather conditions that cause the extreme firesincluding early melting of snow cover and drying of soils, which increases the risk of ignition and spread.
“In the current climate, similar weather patterns can be expected to occur once every 25 years.”
The assessment was released Tuesday evening by the World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international academic collaboration that aims to objectify how climate change influences the intensity and likelihood of given weather events. It focuses in particular on the exceptional fires that occurred in Canada from May to July, and whose fumes had notably enveloped part of the east coast of the United States – the images of New York in a toxic fog had gone around the world.
The conditions favorable to fires observed this year were unprecedented, but “in the current climate, we can expect similar weather conditions occur once every 25 years“, indicates the WWA. With already 14 million hectares burned – i.e. 4.5 times the surface area of Belgium, and 7.5 times its annual emissions –this fire season is the most devastating on record for Canada.
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