"Canada’s 2023 wildfire season was the most destructive ever recorded."

More than 6,000 fires had torched a staggering 15 million hectares of land

This was more than double the 1989 record

• The record was 7.1 million hectares

"By mid-July, there were 29 mega-fires, each exceeding 100,000 hectares."

"From June 1 to 25, more land burned in southern Quebec than in the previous 20 years combined."

"Canada experienced its warmest May to July period in over 80 years, breaking previous national temperature records for the two-month period by 0.8°C."

• This shows that climate change was most likely a factor in the increase in wildfires

"Furthermore, they found that wildfire-prone weather conditions in Quebec were 50 percent more intense because of climate change caused by human activity, while the peak intensity recorded was 20 percent higher."

The fire activity in Canada could also impact forest carbon balance, biodiversity, and disrupt local businesses, forest sector economies, and Indigenous communities

Air Quality was very poor throughout the United States during this time

Air pollution traveled as far as Europe and China

There were billions of dollars in property damage

"This amount of tree cover loss produced roughly 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide."

"Due to Canada’s emissions accounting methods, most of the country’s wildfire-related emissions will not be officially reported in the UN’s global inventory, despite their substantial contribution to climate change."

Canada started to show what the increase in climate can do to forests and the fires it can create

"As larger forested areas burn, more carbon is emitted into the atmosphere, further exacerbating climate change and contributing to even more fires."

The acceleration in climate change is making wildfires bigger, faster, and more frequent

"In 2024, wildfires continued to devastate the country, becoming the sixth-most destructive season on record, with over 5.3 million hectares burned."

Research shows that governments need to keep people out of unsafe ecosystems while also pushing for a reduction in fossil fuel use

In Canada, the area burned in 2023 was more than six times the historical average

"Climate change more than doubled the likelihood of extreme fire weather conditions in Eastern Canada in 2023 (World Weather Attribution 2023)."

"93% of the area burned in Canada in 2023 was from fires ignited by lightning; only 7% by human ignition (Jain et al. 2024)."

The smoke from the wildfires causes many health problems and school closures

A single week of smoke in Ontario created a cost of close to 1.2 billion dollars for healthcare

People in Western Canada have started to develop asthma from the smoke

"Wildland fire has been a persistent feature of the Canadian landscape for millennia (Richard 1993; Price et al. 2013)."

" On average, fires have burned 1.96 Mha per year in Canada from 1959 to 2015, and the annual area burned is trending upward (Hanes et al. 2019)."

Lightning and people have been the main causes of these fires

• They account for roughly 50% of the fires each

"The seasonality of human- and lightning-caused fires differs, with human-caused fires occurring more often during spring and autumn, and lightning-caused fires occurring more often during the summer months."

Scientific research on Canadian Wildfires began in the 1920s

"A major accomplishment of early wildland fire research was the development of the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS)."

• This system includes a Fire Weather Index and a Fire Behaviour Prediction system

Research of these fires now is much more complex and computer based which is helping deal with the fires a little better