Wildfires in the boreal forests of Canada and Russia are intensifying, causing a dramatic drop in air quality and spewing large amounts of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, the European Union’s Earth Observation program has warned.
Fires in Alberta, Canada’s main oil-producing province alone, have burned about 1 million acres since Jan. 1 and forced the evacuation of nearly 30,000 people in the past week.
The relocation of communities and the looming fires have also caused more than a dozen oil and gas companies to temporarily close or scale back operations, including Cenovus Energy, Paramount Resources, Crescent Point Energy, NuVista Energy and Tourmaline Oil, the largest U.S. natural gas producer.
About 3.7 percent of production, or about 320,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, had been affected as of midweek, Reuters reported. By comparison, a fire in 2016 shut down more than 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day of oil sands production.
The most recent fires have been in the boreal forest, which is made up mostly of coniferous trees that cover much of Canada, Russia and Alaska and is the world’s largest store of terrestrial carbon.
Fires in Alberta have emitted 5 megatons of carbon this year, according to the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service.
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a study Discovery published last year Wildfires in northern North America could release as much as 12 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide between now and 2050, releasing stored carbon into the atmosphere as they burn.
According to calculations by the International Energy Agency, global energy and industrial carbon dioxide emissions will reach a new record of 36.8Gt in 2022.
While boreal forest fires are not uncommon in the spring, scientists have observed increasing fire intensity over the past decade as average temperatures in the north of the planet rise faster than near the equator due to global warming, as reflective snow ice in the north has melted. .
Earlier this year, researchers found Summer fires in boreal forests have expanded since 2000 and contributed nearly a quarter of total wildfire carbon emissions in 2021, releasing a record 1.76 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
© via Reuters
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday that the country’s armed forces will help provide firefighting support and airlift resources to people living in Alberta.
The region is expected to experience above-average temperatures over the weekend, according to the Canadian government’s weather service, which forecasts “unusually hot, dry conditions” and above-average seasonal temperatures through Tuesday.
In the U.S., the National Weather Service predicted an intense heatwave will affect the Pacific Northwest starting Friday, with areas in Oregon and Washington state experiencing unseasonably high daytime temperatures of 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit).
This May 7, 2023, image from the spectroradiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite shows billowing smoke from fires in Alberta (right) and British Columbia, two Canadian provinces. ©MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, /AFP via Getty Images
Plenty of smoke from the fires in Canada, visible to satellites, has moved over the country in recent days toward the northeast of the United States and is expected to continue moving toward the Atlantic Ocean in the coming days.
In Russia, wildfires are burning in the Urals and Siberia, stretching from the Chelyabinsk region through the Omsk and Novosibirsk regions to Primorsky Krai, and affecting Kazakhstan and Mongolia.
Earlier this week, Russian local authorities said that as of Monday morning, more than 54,000 hectares of forest in the Uralsverdlovsk region were on fire, according to the Associated Press.
Total carbon emissions from wildfires in Russia are now estimated to be below average for this period, Copernicus said.
But Mark Parrington, senior scientist at the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Program, said the size and intensity of the current fires “reflect increased fire risk after a drier than usual few weeks”.
In Canada, for example, just over 44 percent of Alberta experienced drought at the end of March, according to North American Drought Monitor show.
Wildfires in the northern hemisphere generally become more frequent and intense as the planet warms and summers heat up. Extreme heat in the Mediterranean fueled fires in France, Spain, Portugal and Greece last summer.
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