Millions of people face a smoky summer
Forest Fires: Now that’s real air pollution. SH
In this special edition of the Green Daily newsletter we’re bringing you the latest on Canada’s wildfires and the impact they’re having across much of North America.
As the intensity and size of wildfires grow, more and more people are being exposed to dangerously unhealthy air. What does that do to your body and how can you protect yourself? Learn more in today's episode of the Zero podcast and our explainer on what science tells us about the dangers of wildfire smoke.
Millions of people face a smoky summer
By Brian K. Sullivan
This week is just the beginning of what could be a long, smoke-filled summer in North America — and the start of a new seasonal pattern made possible by climate change.
The flames that have scorched Canada for weeks, driving thousands from their homes in regions along both coasts, have pumped plumes of caustic smoke south across some of the most densely populated areas of the US. Many of the 436 wildfires raging right now, according to the latest numbers from Canada’s Wildland Fire Information System, ignited either before or in the very earliest days of what’s normally a busy season for Canadian fires.
June is often the worst month, said Brendan Rogers, a scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts who studies boreal forest fires. Canada is seeing snow that melts out faster in the spring, he said, allowing for an earlier start to the burning season.
But an early start doesn’t mean a swifter end. Natural Resources Canada’s outlook calls for “well above average” risk of outbreaks from British Columbia to the Ontario-Quebec border throughout this month, and an above-average risk in most of the Northwest Territories, the remainder of Quebec, a large part of Labrador and the Maritime Provinces. Most of the country remains at above-average risk through August. If the forecast bears out, Canada won’t begin to see much relief until September, and even then large parts of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba will have a well above-average fire risk.
New York City will continue to breathe in choking smoke from fires across eastern Canada for the next few days, raising health alarms across impacted areas. Photographer: Alex Kent/Bloomberg
A traffic officer wears a mask amid a smoky haze in Times Square, New York, on June 7. Photographer: David Dee Delgado/Getty Images
Smoke covers skylines of the boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan on June 7. Photographer: Ed Jones/Getty Images
“Why is this happening? May was a record warm month across Canada,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles. “There are links between record warmth and climate change.”
In all 2,305 fires have consumed about 4 million hectares across the country, making it the worst fire season in Canada’s history, according to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The resulting thick plumes of smoke pouring south into the US Northeast have created some of the worst concentrations of air pollution in the region since 1999, according to AccuWeather Inc.
Wildfire smoke is a mix of gases and particles from burned trees, buildings and whatever else the flames consume, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It can “make anyone sick,” the agency warned, but people with asthma, pulmonary or heart disease, or who are pregnant, young or elderly are especially vulnerable. Among the symptomsare an elevated heart rate, headaches, wheezing, coughing and fatigue. Paper masks that became a staple during the Covid-19 pandemic won’t filter out wildfire smoke, according to the CDC. N95 and P100 respirators are needed, and the best method is avoiding smoke.
Climate change has spurred on hotter, drier conditions around the world that have lengthened fire seasons in many regions, including California, Europe and Siberia. Changes to the climate have put more energy into the atmosphere, which means severe lightning storms are happening much further north.
When Rogers, the scientist in Massachusetts, first began exploring the tundra he didn’t need safety training for lightning. Now such knowledge is crucial. “The unfortunate part is we are locked in, for some extended time, to continued warming with worsening fire seasons,” he said.
Rogers has found fires increasing across the boreal forests and tundra of Canada and Alaska as snow melts earlier. The blazes cause the permafrost to melt, releasing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in a dangerous feedback loop. Black carbon from the fires themselves ends up landing on ice sheets in Greenland, spurring faster melting there.
Climate change has without a doubt added to Canada’s fires this year, Rogers said.
A cyclist wears a mask near the US Capitol on Thursday, June 8, 2023. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg
Canada has been burning across almost the entire length of the country, which Swain and other experts described as unusual. Canada is such a big place that wildfire season normally peaks at different times. The flames started in May as large fires moved across Alberta, a western province, shutting down oil sands production and crimping the nation’s energy output. That was followed by an outbreak around Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the Atlantic coast.
While Canada is having a record year, the US fire season is off to a slow start. There have been 18,403 fires that have burned 518,698 acres since January 1, according to the US National Interagency Fire Center. That total lags behind the 10-year average of 21,908 fires burning just over 1 million acres by this point.
The divergence between North American neighbors is a tale of two winters. A series of Pacific storms brought rain and snow to the Western US, squelching a years-long drought throughout the region and leading to widespread flooding. The result was a slow start to fire season, said Zach Tolby, manager and lead scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fire Weather Testbed.
Canada, by contrast, missed out on the winter rains and rolled through spring with little additional precipitation. Several pre-summer heat waves have already visited Canada, and large parts of its west in particular are mired in drought. That left the region susceptible to bigger, stronger fires, with a lot of smoke to fill the skies far beyond the country.
“You don’t think of New York City as a place to have wildfire-related impacts,” said Swain. “Even people who don’t live in the actual wildfire zones are very much at risk from these severe smoke-pollution episodes. It is just an illustration of how wildfire impacts are not just located in places where your house burns down.”
We manage just fine here in Alberta. We have had some smoky days but for the most part it has been rather clear with blue skies and sunny. There is also a component of forest management and fire suppression along with the fact there has been an unusually high number of human caused fire starts that has led to higher intensity. We have a large forested area in Alberta and when we go through periods of drought we get fires. 30 year fire history trend lines have decreased little. There are peaks and valleys but that comes with cyclical weather and a changing climate. Instead of fearing we should be examining our management strategies and adaptation of change. Not the end of the world.