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Canadian fires released record carbon last year

9/26/24

A new study published in the journal Nature reveals that Canada's wildfires last year released more carbon than all countries except China the US and India combined in 2022. Four percent of Canada's forests burned in large-scale fires in 2023.

Photo:Pixabay

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California including the study's author warn that emissions from wildfires last year were unprecedented in Canada. Last year alone fires released 647 megatonnes of carbon which is four times Canada's annual production from fossil fuels.

Under normal circumstances Canadian forests absorb more carbon than they produce. However, this has changed in recent years as more fires are raging with more intense heat waves. The big question will be how wildfire patterns will change in the future.

The intensity of wildfires in Canada has been increasing over the past few years. In 2023 Canada was plagued by unusually high temperatures and a prolonged drought. Fires in several provinces and forced the evacuation of more than two hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants. Smoke from the fires caused the worst pollution in modern Canadian and US history.

Satellite data helped scientists determine carbon emissions the most. They further analyzed the weather and found that Canada was dealing with an unprecedented drought and the hottest summer since 1980. Scientists agree that there will be more similarly warm years in the future.

If carbon is released into the atmosphere half remains there and a quarter is absorbed by the oceans. The rest is absorbed by the Earth's biosphere. How forests change in their ability to store carbon has some pretty significant implications for how much carbon we can emit globally. Canadian forests currently account for eight and a half percent of the world's forests.

The emission estimates by NASA scientists roughly correspond to analyzes by scientists from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, who used different methods for measurement. Fires in Canada also released large amounts of carbon this year but the smoke did not have as significant an impact on the US. The year 2024 will certainly rank among the years with the highest number of fires in the last two decades.

Source:NBCNEWS/Editorial