Experts say climate change escalated the fires with the fumes spilling over into to the United States
The New York skyline turns orange due to Canadian wildfires. Photo: @UN / Twitter
Throughout Canada, more than 400 wildfires have led to mass evacuation across the country. While every year, Canada experiences a wildfire season between May and October, this level of destruction is unprecedented and is touted to be the worst in history.
The country’s federal minister of Emergency Preparedness Bill Blair informed that the 9.4 million acres have burned so far, equivalent to 15 times the 10-year average. He added that, consequently warm, dry conditions were expected in the months to come, Reuters reported on June 8, 2023.
“Persistent hot and dry conditions are fanning the flames of Canadian wildfires. So far this spring, wildfires in Canada have scorched an area more than 10 times larger than average,” the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the agency of the United States federal government responsible for the civilian space program, tweeted on June 7.
The data proves it. Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), a service provided by the Copernicus Earth Observation Programme of the European Union, told Down to Earth (DTE):
I think the key finding is just the sheer scale and persistence of these fires in general. I am used to monitoring some wildfires in Canada during May and early June but not at the scale, which is across seven provinces, we have been seeing for more than a month now.
“For 30 May to 6 June, Ontario recorded 1.7 megatonnes of carbon emissions, Quebec recorded 9.5 megatonnes of carbon emissions, Nova Scotia recorded 0.6 megatonnes of carbon emissions,” Parrington told DTE, as per his monitoring report of wildfires recorded in all three Canadian provinces over a week.
“In the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) we estimate wild-fire emissions around the world based on satellite observations of active fires. I've been using our data to monitor the daily total intensity and emissions for all Canadian provinces and, for the year to date, many provinces are experiencing the highest emissions by far since 2003 (which is when our fire emissions dataset begins),” Parrington told DTE.
In a press release, Copernicus said, “Canada has reached one of the highest emissions on record for the month of May, breaking the total records in British Colombia, Saskatchewan, Northwest Territories, and Nova Scotia.
“The situation in Saskatchewan has been particularly extreme for the month, given that the previous record emissions for this region in a single May were two Megatonnes, while in May 2023 they had over 23 Megatonnes,” the statement said.
Parrington added further, “In relation to these fires there have been several instances of smoke crossing the Atlantic and the degraded air quality in the North East USA presently is a reflection of the scale of the fires in Quebec.”
The fires are producing substantial amounts of smoke, which moved from Quebec, Ontario, and down to the North Eastern United States, Andy Vander Yacht, Assistant Professor of Silviculture & Forest Ecosystem Management, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry told DTE.
“A low pressure was kind of situated over Nova Scotia, and moved towards Maine, creating a counterclockwise rotation in the air and leading to winds that are going from North to South, passing through the wildfires in Canada and bringing the smoke right into the North Eastern United States,” Yacht explained.
By June 7, the skies over New York and other North American cities grew smoky. NASA said that smoke from the fires was drifting southwest and south.
On that day, New York recorded the highest AQI in the world at 342, almost double the index compared to other polluted cities such as Dubai (168) and Delhi (164), according to IQAir, a Reuters report stated.
Wildfire smoke contains various harmful pollutants, including fine particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds and, DTE previously reported. This might damage the lungs and heart and worsen prior conditions, such as asthma.
“Yesterday, New York was covered in an eerie orange glow from the smoke particles. We are all advised to stay indoors as much as possible and wear N95 masks outdoors. What makes this event difficult is that many New Yorkers live and work in older buildings that have poor air circulation, which makes it hard to avoid the smoke completely,” Caroline S. Juang, Ph.D. Candidate, at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Columbia University, told DTE.
According to the Canada Drought Monitor, nearly all of the country’s 10 provinces have reported an abnormal level of dryness, leading to the wildfire season having a dry and hot start this year.
“Human-caused climate change has led to an increase in the heat that allows for fire, increasing drought conditions that can dry out fuel moisture. That means that as long as there is an ignition, whether human-caused or lightning-caused, there is a higher chance of wildfires starting and spreading,” Juang told DTE.
On how this generally works, Yacht explained: “When you think of fire behaviour, the best way to capture it is the fire behaviour triangle (topography, fuels, and weather), these are the factors that largely affect and predict how wildfires behave on a landscape.
“The extent and duration of the intensity of drought are acting on two components of the fire behavior triangle here. It’s the weather, hot temperature, and really relatively low humidity, that dried out fuel moisture of the vegetation, finally contributing to the fires,” Yacht told DTE.
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