Canada's record-breaking wildfires in 2023 released almost as many emissions as a decade, report says

Aerial view of a wildfire at Tatkin Lake in British Columbia, Canada, July 10, 2023. BC Wildfire Service / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

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Last year's record-breaking wildfires in Canada caused as many greenhouse gas emissions in a single season as would normally be seen in a decade.

According to a new study jointly led by the University of East Anglia (UEA), the UK Met Office, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH), climate change has made unprecedented wildfires in Canada and parts of the Amazon at least three times more likely, releasing around 2.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide – roughly a quarter of total wildfire emissions worldwide.

“Last year we saw wildfires claim lives, destroy property and infrastructure, trigger mass evacuations, threaten livelihoods and damage vital ecosystems,” said the analysis' lead author, Dr Matthew Jones, a research fellow at UEA's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, in a UEA press release. “Wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense as the climate warms, and both society and the environment are suffering the consequences.”

The report found that carbon dioxide emissions from wildfires worldwide were 16 percent above average, emitting a total of 9.48 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. Emissions from Canadian boreal wildfires were more than nine times higher than average over the past two decades, accounting for nearly a quarter of global emissions.

The forest fires in Canada led to the evacuation of more than 230,000 people and the death of eight firefighters. Due to the forest fires in the Amazon, the region had some of the worst air quality in the world.

The loss of carbon stocks in the tropical forests of South America and the boreal forests of Canada will affect the climate for years to come. After a fire, forests take decades to centuries to regenerate, meaning a prolonged lack of carbon storage.

“The real problem starts when the fire regime moves away from its natural state, leading to more frequent and more intense fires. Unfortunately, that's exactly what we're seeing in forests, and it's creating an imbalance – the immediate emissions from wildfires this decade are increasingly outweighing the delayed sinks from fires in previous decades,” Jones said, as reported by The Guardian.

The report aimed to explain the causes of the extreme fire levels in the western Amazon, Canada and Greece. The researchers found that the hot, dry fire weather in all three focus regions had changed dramatically compared to a planet without climate change. The extreme fire weather in 2023 and 2024 was not only at least three times more likely in Canada, but also twice as likely in Greece and twenty times as likely in the Amazon.

The attribution tools used by the research team concluded with over 99 percent confidence that the extent of wildfires in the Amazon and Canada in 2023-24 was almost certainly due to climate change.

“It is almost certain that fires during the 2023 wildfires in Canada and Amazonia were larger due to climate change,” said Dr. Chantelle Burton, chief climate scientist at the Met Office, in the press release. “We are already seeing the impacts of climate change on weather patterns around the world, and this is disrupting normal fire regimes in many regions. It is important for fire research to study how climate change is affecting fires, as this will provide insight into how they may continue to change in the future.”

The study's climate models suggest that extreme wildfires will become more intense and frequent by 2100, especially under scenarios with high greenhouse gas emissions.

“No matter what emissions scenario we pursue, the risk of extreme wildfires will increase in Canada. This underscores the need for society to not only reduce emissions but also adapt to changing wildfire risks,” said Dr. Douglas Kelley, senior fire scientist at UKCEH, in the press release. “These projections underscore the urgent need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and manage vegetation to reduce the risk and impacts of increasingly severe wildfires on society and ecosystems.”

The analysis found that the extent of wildfires in the Amazon last year was exacerbated by human activities such as large-scale forest degradation and deforestation to expand agriculture. This exacerbated the impacts of climate change by making forests more vulnerable to fire during fire weather and drought.

“In many tropical forests, such as the Amazon, deforestation and agricultural expansion have exacerbated the impacts of climate change on wildfire risk, making these vital ecosystems more vulnerable,” Burton said in the press release.

Forecasts for the 2024–25 fire season indicate that the likelihood of dry, hot and windy weather conditions will remain above average in parts of South and North America, with favorable conditions for wildfires in the Brazilian Pantanal, British Columbia, Alberta and California in June and July.

“We are not particularly surprised by some of the recent fires in the news, as above-average fire weather was forecast in parts of North and South America. However, the extensive Arctic fires we have recently experienced have surprised us – something we will explore in our next report,” said Dr. Francesca Di Giuseppe, ECMWF chief scientist, in the press release.

The report, Status of forest fires 2023-2024appeared in the magazine Earth system science data.

“These fires are something that should worry us all,” Jones said, according to a Guardian report. “The full impact of last year's fires will not be seen for a long time.”

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