DATE: Aug 8, 2017
SNIP: On July 7, Mike Flannigan, a scientist at the University of Alberta, stared at satellite imagery on his computer as one wildfire after another ignited across British Columbia during the course of the unusually hot day.
In total, 140 wildfires began on that one day, setting what may be a new record, Flannigan said in an interview.
In Canada, Flannigan said, the area burned each year has doubled since the 1970s, despite improvements in fire management.
“This is due to human caused climate change,” he said. “I can’t be more direct than that.”
It’s not just British Columbia that’s suffering this summer either. Across the globe, it’s as if summer weather is on steroids, with searing heat waves, deadly flash floods, and massive fires affecting many areas. Scientists say that we’d better get used to it, thanks in part to global warming.
Studies have tied the increasing number of large fires in parts of Canada and the U.S. to global warming. In fact, the level of fire activity across the boreal forests, which stretch from Alaska to Canada and around the top of the world to Scandinavia and Russia, is unprecedented in the past 10,000 years, according to a study published in 2013.
Wildfires haven’t just been confined to the far north this year either. In the U.S., 5.9 million acres have burned in fires so far in 2017, mainly across the West, which is 1.9 million acres above the past decade’s annual average amount. As of Monday morning, firefighters were battling 11 large blazes in California alone, with additional large fires burning in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.