Firing off
Canada’s wildfire season, which we were charting about back in August, was already the country’s worst on record. However, in the past week — when, historically, wildfire rates should decline as temperatures start to drop — it’s gotten even worse.
Fires have ravaged forests across five Canadian provinces and territories, from British Columbia to the Northwest Territories to Nova Scotia, continuously throughout the last 21 weeks of long, hot summer. Indeed, the past week alone has seen a total land area burned comparable to nearly an entire typical fire for Canada.
Up in smoke
The recent fires have brought the total for the season to nearly 18 million hectares — equivalent to the state of Washington or about 80% the size of Minnesota — resulting in more than 230,000 people being evacuated and over 4,300 international firefighters being brought in to quell the out-of-control blazes. Beyond the devastating loss of land, the fires have also tripled the record for carbon emissions from previous wildfire seasons: Canadian fires have emitted almost 410 megatons of carbon in 2023, accounting for over a quarter of the year’s global wildfire emissions to-date.
Smoke from the fires is expected to blanket regions of the Northeastern US in the next few days, including New York. Alongside currently managing severe flooding, NYC is forecast to suffer through an Air Quality Index of around 55 — still much lower than the recordings seen in June, when wildfire-borne plumes from Canada caused New York to briefly have the worst air quality of any city in the world.
