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]]>The smoke hitting the shores of Lake Ontario and places far to the south was coming from forest fires hundreds of kilometres to the north and east. These fires were burning more than the trees. Remote farms and homes, debris on forest floors, farm equipment, trucks, cars and many unknown things were being burned and going up in smoke as well.
Fire season had erupted far earlier than in the past because of prolonged drought in many areas of Canada’s boreal forest region that spans much of the country. Meteorologists, climatologists, and foresters all had the same explanation – climate change. The new state of normal included the term fire weather.
Today as I look out over the lake, the smoke is gone. The sky and lake are blue. But over the last almost two weeks since we moved here, the smoke has come back several times. Forecasters expect it to be a chronic problem for the rest of this summer, and likely well into the future.
Following on the heels of the wood smoke came an early summer heatwave with temperatures and humidity well above seasonal averages. Again, the explanation given by meteorologists and climatologists was simple – climate change.
The new normal includes wildfire seasons that span from spring through to the fall, and heat domes that persist for days. Some scientists are referring to this as the first climate change tipping point, long predicted by those paying attention to rising carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and other human-activity-generated greenhouse gas emissions.
Why now? There are lots of reasons but the one that climatologists are zeroing in on is diminishing polar land and sea ice. The polar ice caps in the Arctic and Antarctica are seeing record melts. In June, the Greenland Ice Sheet recorded one of the largest melts ever seen. And the month turned out to be the hottest ever measured, beating the previous record set in 2019 by 0.16 Celsius (0.29 Fahrenheit).
Every continent on the planet experienced new heat records. Texas and Florida were roasting, as was much of Mexico. A mountain heatwave in Iran saw temperatures at 1,500 metres (approximately 5,000 feet) hit daytime highs of 49 Celsius (120 Fahrenheit). In Puerto Rico, the heat index reached 51.9 Celsius (125 Fahrenheit).
Some of the record heat could be explained by the beginning of the next Pacific Ocean El Niño 2-to-7 year cycle that has boosted global average temperatures by as much as 0.2 Celsius (0.36 Fahrenheit).
The combination of El Niño, extended fire seasons, polar ice melt, and heat domes is expected in the next year to push global mean temperatures 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) higher than pre-Industrial Revolution records.
The cost of these recent extremes goes beyond the damage to forests, oceans, lakes and other ecosystems. The high temperatures are also taking a toll on human health. In the U.S. alone, a recently published policy report coming from the Center for American Progress estimates a rise in healthcare-related costs of $1 billion this year from rising atmospheric temperatures. The report estimates an increase of 235,000 in hospital emergency room visits and 56,000 additional admissions. It states,
“The growing threat of extreme heat requires all levels of government and the private sector to confront the fundamental crisis of climate change by taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to pursue policies that mitigate the effects of extreme heat and the emergencies it creates.”
It calls for immediate action to:
The saying “ignorance is bliss” doesn’t apply when responding or not to climate change. A better phrase to describe what is the current state of response is “ignore at your peril.” That applies to all of us as the primary agents of climate change and stewards of the planet.
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]]>Conspiracy theorists looking at the wildfires that have broken out across Canada raise suspicions about the timing of these outbreaks. They spout similar statements to those made by politicians like the two Premiers mentioned above.
Climatologists have a very different explanation. Much of Canada’s north this spring has experienced higher-than-normal temperatures. Warmer air with temperatures closer to what we see in mid to late summer leads to drier conditions. Drier conditions feed wildfires.
The link between climate change and wildfire outbreaks is well established. That’s why every summer we see headlines in Canada that describe fires burning tens of thousands of hectares of forest, threatening mostly adjacent remote and suburban communities. The fires that swept through Fort McMurray, Alberta, a few years ago are a case in point.
Wildfires accelerate climate change when they release megatons of carbon into the atmosphere coming from burned trees, forest-floor tinder, and dried-out peat deposits. It is nature’s equivalent to our burning of fossil fuels and the amount entering the atmosphere this spring will endure for decades into the future. We are stuck with it.
Get used to the term described above. The Canadian Forest Service concluded after a recent study that “the future is smoky.” Fire seasons will get longer, start earlier, and contribute more to global warming than in the past. The combination of warmer weather, drier conditions, and tinder-dry forests represent a triple threat.
Smokier air is unhealthy air. Here in Eastern North America over the last few days, we have all been exposed to the reality of fire weather. In Toronto schools, outdoor activities have been curtailed. Children in daycare, rather than playing outside, are being confined indoors. When I went out yesterday to run errands, I wore a mask, something I seldom resorted to outdoors during the height of COVID-19’s spread. This is a bizarre reversal of behaviours and conditions during the pandemic of the last three-plus years.
Other studies by the Canadian Forest Service predict a 50% increase in fire weather conditions in Western Canada in the coming decades and a 200 to 300% increase in Eastern Canada. Fire weather is expected to burn twice the average area burned in recent years by the end of this century. For Canadians who have always been proud of our pristine natural landscapes, these predictions may come as a shock.
Unfortunately, the country is not alone in experiencing fire weather. Australia, the United States, Russia, and the European Union are all seeing warmer temperatures, both day and night, with drier summers which means an expanded fire weather season, already in the present, will be worse in the future.
What this all means is that mitigating climate change will be that much harder as nature adds to the human contributions responsible for global warming. As of a little more than a week ago, the latest measurement of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had reached 424.64 parts per million, an increase of 50% over values obtained from samplings trapped in Antarctic ice cores dating back to pre-Industrial Age times.
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