Warming loaded the dice for fire weather — hot, dry conditions that leave forests ripe for burning — in Canada and in part of the Amazon last year, according to a new report.
Warming loaded the dice for fire weather — hot, dry conditions that leave forests ripe for burning — in Canada and in part of the Amazon last year, according to a new report.
Scientists determined that climate change increased the odds of fire weather in Canada threefold and in the Amazon twentyfold. It is “virtually certain” that fires in both regions were larger as a result of warming, said report coauthor Chantelle Burton, a climate scientist with the U.K. Met Office.
Fires in Canada were particularly severe, burning an area roughly the size of Alabama and unleashing an unprecedented volume of emissions. “In Canada, almost a decade’s worth of carbon emissions from fire were recorded in a single fire season,” said lead author Matthew Jones, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia.
Read more at: Yale Environment 360
Wildfires in Quebec, Canada, June 2023. Photo Credit: European Space Agency
