WILDFIRESAdapting to Wildfires in a Warming World
Recent wildfires in Canada and California offer a preview of a world made far more dangerous by climate change, one in which smoke and fire exact an ever-increasing toll on public health and the economy.
This June, historically severe Canadian wildfires caused millions in the eastern United States to head indoors. The Canadian disaster turned the skies in U.S. cities orange. Briefly, New York City had the worst air quality in the world.
With climate change driving ever more frequent, intense, and bigger wildfires—which firefighters struggle to control—Canada’s problems stretched to the United States, causing millions of Americans’ health to suffer. This current catastrophe should serve as a warning to prepare for the now unavoidable harms of climate change, including far-flung toxic smoke.
Few experts anticipated that Canada’s wildfires would rapidly become a U.S. problem. The first of the Canadian wildfires started in southwestern Nova Scotia at the end of May. It grew close to one hundred square miles, becoming the largest wildfire in that province’s history. Other fires soon followed in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, and Quebec. As of June 16, Canada had 2,467 wildfires burning. Canadian authorities anticipate this year will be the country’s worst wildfire season ever, with an area bigger than Massachusetts and Vermont combined already incinerated. Climate change honors no borders, and more smoke could well find its way south.
The Canadian wildfires are a sign of what is to come as climate change worsens wildfire risk: Climate change brings higher temperatures, and more heat means deeper drought and drier air. The same heat sucks moisture from vegetation, making it more flammable. Climate change has increased the intensity, speed, and size of wildfires. Bigger fires can carry their own extreme weather—creating “firenadoes,” funnels of smoke, flames, and wind that act like tornadoes.
Sixty-six thousand wildfires burned in the United States last year—seven thousand more than in 2021. The average length of the western United States’ wildfire season is now three months longer than it was decades ago. A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences determined that human-caused climate change drove a five-fold increase in area burned in northern and central California from 1996 to 2021. Additionally, burned area from fires has increased 172 percent more than it would have absent climate change’s effects.
