Carbon emissions from wildfires in Canada were the highest ever recorded in May, highlighting the growing risk of blazes earlier in the year.
Wildfires in Canada emitted record amounts of carbon in May, showing how the risk of blazes is increasing even before the summer fire season begins.
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| Smoke from a wildfire rises over houses in Bedford, Canada REUTERS/Eric Martyn |
Emissions for the month reached 54.8 million tonnes, more than double the carbon emitted by wildfires in any May since estimates began in 2003, according to the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. In the boreal forests of western Canada, provincial records were set in British Columbia, the Northwest Territories and Saskatchewan, which exceeded its previous high by 15 times.
Carbon emissions also reached new peaks in rainy Nova Scotia on Canada’s eastern seaboard. The province has been struggling with its biggest blaze ever, and its emissions for the month of May totalled 1.1 million tonnes, more than in any full year previously.
“It’s certainly a shock that it’s so active across such a wide area of Canada and so early, before the summer season started,” says Mark Parrington at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Bonn, Germany. “The concern is the risk [of fire] is increased earlier in the season.”
As conditions become hotter and drier, wildfires are burning with more intensity, making big fire years bigger, he adds. Some 2.7 million hectares have gone up in flames this May, Canada’s emergency preparedness minister, Bill Blair, said on 1 June.
The record-breaking inferno near Barrington Lake, Nova Scotia, has burned more than 17,000 hectares. Flames have reached 90 metres in height, “rolling like a freight train” through forests at the south of the peninsula, Dave Rockwood at the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources said in a webinar on 31 May.
A dozen other fires are burning in the province, including near the capital of Halifax. More than 200 houses have been destroyed and 21,000 people evacuated.
Air quality alerts have been issued in several US states and smoke from western Canadian wildfires has blown all the way to Scandinavia and the Arctic Ocean, where it can sometimes settle as soot and speed up sea ice melt.
“The fact that the smoke travels so many thousands of kilometres is also an indicator of the size of [the fires] and the intensity,” says Parrington.