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Revelations about Canada's wildfires have made it very obvious that we are going about reducing carbon production in an absurdly wrong manner. We can make a huge difference in carbon production by reducing wildfires through proper forest management, and we can do it without destroying the economy.
N.W.T. fires have released 97 megatonnes of carbon, says
European agency — 277 times what its people emit
Territory on track to beat 2014 record for how much land has burned
Liny Lamberink · CBC News · Posted: Aug 28, 2023 1:00 AM PDT |
An aerial view of the wildfire threatening the Yellowknife area from Aug. 17. The intensity of the fire dampened over the weekend thanks to rain, lighter winds and cooler conditions. (N.W.T. Fire)
Wildfires in the N.W.T have emitted 97 megatonnes of carbon into the air so far this year — 277 times more than what was caused by humans in the territory back in 2021.
Mark Parrington, a senior scientist working at the European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), said the N.W.T. has contributed the most of all the provinces and territories to Canada's total wildfire emissions.
From the start of the year up until Aug. 23, wildfires across Canada have emitted 327 megatonnes of carbon into the air according to CAMS data. (For context, one megatonne is a million tonnes.)
More than a quarter of that has been generated by wildfires in the N.W.T., which began burning back in May and have displaced tens of thousands of residents across 10 communities this summer — including the capital city of Yellowknife. The fires have caused damage so far in Kátł'odeeche First Nation, Enterprise and Behchokǫ̀. Hay River and Kátł'odeeche First Nation have been displaced twice by wildfire in a matter of months.
Houses in Enterprise, N.W.T., that were burned by wildfire. (Tyson Koschik/CBC)
Canada's North is warming faster than other parts of the planet, leading to more severe wildfires. It's also the reason why N.W.T., infrastructure is jeopardized by thawing permafrost, traditional ways of life are threatened as species come and go, and one N.W.T. community is at risk of washing away.
"We can all unequivocally agree this is climate change at the very root of this," said Jessica Davey-Quantick, a territorial wildfire information officer, during a press conference last week.
"We're going to see more active fire behaviour, more extreme weather, more drought-like conditions — all of those factors have kind of combined. But it's really hard to say that there's one culprit that led it to communities this year, when it didn't in previous years."
The nerdy part
Let's walk through the math: 97.09 megatonnes of carbon emitted as of Aug. 23 this year is equivalent to 356.32 megatonnes of carbon dioxide. You can convert the rate of carbon into carbon dioxide equivalent by multiplying the figure by 3.67.
It's important to make that conversion because the territory reports its annual human-caused emissions in the form of carbon dioxide equivalent — which also take into account other greenhouse gases, like methane and nitrous oxide.
In 2021, the territory emitted 1.287 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Now, we can compare those two numbers equally.
The carbon dioxide equivalent emitted by wildfires this year (356.32 megatonnes) is 277 times more than what was emitted by humans in 2021 (1.287 megatonnes).
These numbers make a big joke of all the carbon-reducing efforts in the NWTs. If the NWT reduced its carbon production by 25% it would take more than 1000 years to undue the carbon production of this year's forest fires. If they reduced it by 50% it would still take more than 1000 years to undue this year's fires and 2014's fires. In other words, they can never recover forest fire damage in the NWTs.
No amount of carbon reduction in NWT can make any difference in the temperature of the territory. Consequently, instead of spending money on carbon reduction by people, we should be investing in forest management to reduce the number and size of fires. That's where we can actually make a difference. And perhaps we should be looking at this on a country-wide basis.
How does it all compare to 2014?
The N.W.T.'s vast boreal forest usually sequesters more carbon than it emits — except during big fire years.
Up until now, 2014 has been considered the territory's worst wildfire year. According to CAMS data up until Aug. 23, the current wildfire season has not quite eclipsed 2014 in terms of emissions. (It has, however, if you compare it to Natural Resources Canada data which says fires that year emitted roughly 94.5 megatonnes of carbon.
Drone aerial still photo of houses in Enterprise, N.W.T., on Aug. 24 that were burned by wildfire.
(Tyson Koschik/CBC)
According to N.W.T. Fire, 2.96 million hectares of land have burned in fires so far this year, but it's calculating an updated figure. The agency said the territory is well on its way to beating the record set back in 2014 of 3.4 million hectares burned.
Wildfires emit more than just carbon
CAMS monitors where wildfires are around the world and how intensely they're burning. It also tracks emissions and forecasts the effect smoke has on the atmosphere.
Parrington said they're able to do this using meteorology and satellite imagery. It's important to monitor wildfire emissions, he said, because of the effects it has on air quality and human health.
"Fires release far more pollutants into the atmosphere than the usual activities like road transport, energy production, industry," he said. "As well as the carbon gases, there's a lot of very harmful and hazardous constituents of smoke, including particulate matter, things like benzene, which a lot of people might associate only as an industrial pollutant."
When fires stop and the wind shifts, Parrington said air quality improves — but pollution from wildfires can persist for a long time if it settles on rivers and water bodies too.
The link between fires and climate change
World Weather Attribution, a U.K. based group that estimates the contribution of climate change to individual extreme weather events, recently released a study that found record-setting fires in Québec earlier this year were made twice as likely because of human-caused warming.
The group says it's exploring options to study wildfires in other parts of Canada, but Yan Boulanger, a forest ecology scientist with Natural Resources Canada and one of the Québec study's authors, said its findings can be extrapolated to Canada's North.
A member of B Company, 2nd Battalion, Royal 22e Régiment, conducts Type III firefighting operations in the vicinity of Hay River, N.W.T., in support of Operation LENTUS on Aug. 22. (Corporal Jonathan King/Canadian Armed Forces)
Québec is one of the areas of Canada that's least affected by climate change, he explained, yet climate change still played a very big role in the fires there.
Given that climate change is having a bigger effect on British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Northwest Territories and Yukon, Boulanger said wildfires in those provinces and territories are probably made more than twice as likely by climate change.
"These are very, very conservative estimates," he said.
Still, Boulanger said he's shocked by the record number of people displaced across the N.W.T. and the evacuations that have taken place in Québec, B.C., Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Yukon.
He said Indigenous people are over-represented among evacuees, and they will continue to be over-represented in the future because their communities are typically in very fire-prone environments.
World Weather Attribution's Québec analysis has not yet been subject to scientific peer review, but it is based on peer-reviewed modelling. In the past, the research group has subjected its analyses to review and has not had to change its findings.
Forest fires all over the world, and especially here in Canada, have been blamed on Climate Change, and yes, there is probably an element of global warming involved. But when some accused climate-change proponents of setting some of those fires, the government and media made fun of them as though the idea was absurd.
Greece has proven that it is not absurd and the RCMP should be investigating the cause of every fire that started in Canada this year.
Greek officials say 79 arrested on arson charges over wildfires
By Clyde Hughes
Firefighters operate during a wildfire, in Palagia village, Alexandroupolis, Thrace, in northern Greece,
on Tuesday. Photo by Dimitris Alexoudis/EPA-EFE
Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Greek officials made 79 arrests connected with alleged arson claims in many of the wildfires that have ravaged the country this summer.
Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias said Thursday that arsonists are continuing to start fires around the country with several new attempts to start blazes northwest of Athens on Mount Parnitha. Hundreds of wildfires have killed 20 people this week.
"Arsonist scum are setting fires that threaten forests, property, and, most of all, human lives," Kikilias said in a briefing. "You will not get away with it. We will find you [and] you will be held accountable."
Stefan Doerr, who heads the Center for Wildfire Research at Swansea University, said that alleged arsonists have taken advantage of hot and dry conditions this summer to set wildfires that then spread quickly.
The bodies of 19 people believed to be migrants with children were discovered near the Evros region of northeastern Greece after a wildfire.
The European Union's Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic said that more than 180,400 acres burned in Alexandroupolis marking the largest wildfire ever recorded among member states.
"We must continue strengthening national and collective prevention and preparedness efforts in view of more brutal fire seasons," Lenarcic said.
Wildfires have burned more than 321,000 acres total in Greece, another EU record, according to the European Forest Fire Information System.
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