"Until last week western #Canada had been enduring a cold spring but the rapid onset of #unseasonably high temperatures, in places 10-15C above the average for early May, is causing #fires and #flooding."
Wonder what it takes for #Alberta and Albertans to connect the dots.
" #Postmedia [is] a media conglomerate that owns virtually all the newspapers of any size in Canada except the longstanding national newspaper, the Globe & Mail. And Postmedia is a very conservative, very corporate friendly, very oil and gas friendly corporation."
"A #heatwave that looks like the historic June 2021 event is getting underway in parts of northern #Canada. It will eventually spread to #BritishColumbia and #Alberta, as well as into the northern United States."
"The unusually early start to the #wildfire season in [#Canada] has put federal and provincial officials on high alert and raised fears about fire-fighting resources being exhausted before the summer even officially begins.
There have been 1000 fires so far this year, with about 200 currently active and 82 considered out of control."
Tell me again how #climate action is so "expensive".
"It’s already a #wildfire season for the record books in #Canada.
Over the coming days, the most extreme temperatures in #Canada are expected to slowly move westward, first scorching #Ontario and adjacent areas Friday before shifting into the #prairies over the weekend.
Persistent and often extreme warmth in the high latitudes is among the clearest signals of #ClimateChange."
(High AQI? Your N95 mask does a good job of filtering PM2.5 pollution. If you have air conditioning, inserting a HEPA or MERV filter turns it into an air purifier).
"About 3.8 million hectares (9.4 million acres) have already burned, some 15 times the 10-year average. Across the country as of today, there are 414 wildfires burning, 239 of which are determined to be out of control.
Canada lost an area the size of the Netherlands to #ForestFires.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault earlier said the province was able to fight 40 fires at the same time.
"But we have 150 fires."
"#Canada is on track to experience its most severe #wildfire season on record, national officials said this week. It’s part of a trend experts say will intensify as #ClimateChange makes hotter, drier weather and longer fire seasons more common."
The ringing of the alarm bell has reached the House of Commons:
"Smoke from wildfires, which turned the skies above Ottawa an apocalyptic orange and choked the air, prompted fierce debate in the House of Commons."
Canada's forestry industry like the lodgepole pine for its fast growth. So logging companies have for decades used that to do "replanting".
"But in recent decades, nearly 30m hectares of pine in western North America alone were killed off by the mountain pine beetles, leaving swaths of tinder on the landscape."
That's not "forest management": that's pushing to the brink.
"Officials from municipalities west of #Edmonton say that the #wildfire situation is "dire," with flames less than two kilometres from the town of Edson."
Yellowhead mayor:
"Last night, the fire that hit Highway 47 travelled in excess of 30 [kilometres] in the last 24 hours," he said. "That is unbelievable, that is not something that is ever seen."
"Researchers have also long drawn attention to the way that Canadian #forestry policies moved away from traditional and #Indigenous practices of #PlannedBurning which safeguard valuable timber resources and people. Regular, controlled burning clears the forest understory and reduces the risk of larger fires spinning out of control, but this had been stopped in much of the country."
The #smoke is not coming to US news centers any more, but #wildfires continue to burn in #Quebec
"The flammability rating is currently “very high” to “extreme” in several areas of the province, the ministry said. Low rainfall and rising temperatures are behind these significant fire risks."
Put your N95 #mask on when you go outside in this regions:
"Dense smoke from #wildfires burning in #Canada continued to migrate eastward Wednesday, swinging around a low-pressure area spinning offshore on the East Coast. In its wake, a channel of thick surface #smoke draped across the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, and increasingly over the Mid-Atlantic plus the Northeast."
"If there is a silver lining in the smoky clouds from #Canada this month, experts say, it’s that Michiganders and millions of #Americans have gained a greater awareness of how #AirPollution affects them, how the #AirQualityIndex works and the risks of #ClimateChange."
NOW is the time to talk about how the #smoke is connected to climate change: now that people are breathing it, or know someone who is breathing it.
"Human-caused #ClimateChange is turning high temperatures that would once have been considered improbable into more commonplace occurrences. And it is intensifying the #heat and dryness that fuel catastrophic #wildfires, allowing them to burn longer and more ferociously, and to churn out more smoke."
"Hot, dry weather in #Canada is expected to last months, but high-risk conditions are likely to arise elsewhere and countries may soon have to call their #firefighters home."
Of the international effort to contain Canada's #wildfires, and the future of firefighting in a #climate changed world.
"The toll of [#ClimateChange] on the Canadian economy is only beginning to sink in.
The #wildfires have upended #oil and #gas operations, reduced available #timber harvests, dampened the #tourism industry and imposed uncounted costs on the national #health system."
" #AirQuality alerts are in effect Saturday for at least eight states across the northern Plains and upper #Midwest as smoke from the #wildfires returns. "
This #AirQualityIndex or #AQI map shows current readings from actual sensors. Many show historical data if you click on the marker; some have pollution forecasts for a few days ahead.
Note: Purple Air consumer grade sensors are known to display numbers that are consistently higher than actual values. Pay more attention to the sensors of state DEPs, the Departments for Environmental Protection: those are more reliable.
"Deaths of two #firefighters days apart prompts reckoning over mounting economic and human toll of #fires that have charred #Canada’s forests"
10 M hectares burned (previous record: 7.6 M hectares, in 1989).
900 #wildfires burning
70 M people in wildfire #smoke
120,000 people #evacuated
OIl and gas production in #Alberta disrupted #Timber stands burned
"The #carbon toll of #Canada’s fires this year will likely far outweigh #emissions from its oil and gas, transport and agriculture sectors—combined.
Kurz’s estimate only covers direct emissions. But roughly the same amount of indirect emissions will be released when the dead remnants of scorched trees decompose in coming years, he says.
Meanwhile, the fire season is barely half over and doesn’t yet show signs of easing."
"Most recent projections indicate a continued potential for higher-than-normal fire activity across most of #Canada throughout the 2023 wildland fire season. For July, warm and dry conditions will increase #wildfire risk from British Columbia and Yukon through to western Labrador. During August, the area at risk will stretch from British Columbia through western Quebec."
"#ForestFires in #Canada this year have released 290 million tonnes of #carbon, doubling a previous annual record, and #emissions are set to rise as hundreds of flames remain active across the country.
Nearly all of Canada's 13 provinces and territories have been impacted by #wildfires. On Thursday, there were more than 1,040 fires burning in Canada, with about 660 considered out of control."
"#Pyrocumulonimbus clouds form when the heat of an intense #wildfire sends smoke as high as the lower stratosphere. When this happens, the pillar of hot, smoky air cools, and a cloud coalesces at its peak.
The #winds produced by these cloud formations are extreme and unpredictable. They can spread flames far faster than normal, and launch embers kilometres away, sparking fresh fires. And they produce #lighting, which can also pose a #FireRisk."
"Canadian fire crews battled early on Thursday to prevent #wildfires from reaching the northern city of #Yellowknife, where all 20,000 residents are leaving after an #evacuation order was declared.
The #NorthwestTerritories, with a population of just 46,000 people, have limited infrastructure and there is only one two-lane road out of Yellowknife to the province of Alberta to the south, a trip of some 540 km (335 miles)."
SECOND large #wildfire near population center:
"About 22,000 people - roughly half the population in #Canada's #NorthwestTerritories - are now displaced in the country's worst fire season on record.
A separate blaze in the west, that threatens #Kelowna, #BritishColumbia, has grown one hundredfold in 24 hours.
The fast-moving fire is bearing down on a city with a population of about 150,000 people, and officials are already reporting "significant structural loss","
"The #fires in [#Kelowna] moved so rapidly on Friday that the number of people under evacuation order went from 4,500 to 15,000 in an hour, while another 20,000 were under evacuation alert. The province currently accounts for over a third of #Canada's 1,062 active fires."
Here is a map of #wildfires in #Canada. The big ones (yellow flames) are concentrated in the west, in British Columbia on the coast, and Alberta to the east of that. And there are some in Quebec on the east side.
"Catastrophic Canadian warming-fueled wildfires last year pumped more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air than India did by burning fossil fuels, setting ablaze an area of forest larger than the US state of West Virginia, new research has found.
It’s about the same amount of carbon dioxide that 647m cars put in the air in a year, based on US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data.
The #wildfires in #Canada made up 27% of global tree cover loss last year."
@CelloMomOnCars Excellent point. As the climate warms, as droughts and heatwaves and lightning storms intensify, we will see MANY more wildfires. And that means a lot more greenhouse gas emissions that will not be counted by countries... so then they can still pretend to be on track for Net Zero by 2050 🙄 as the climate continues to warm, and as droughts and heatwaves and forest fires intensify, etc., etc.