2nd-Worst Fire Season On Record For British Columbia So Far, And Most Of August Still To Come
Poor air quality, blood-red sunsets and mountains swallowed by smoke are just a handful of the impacts of wildfires roaring in British Columbia. The fires kicked up in early July but have spread in recent days as hot, dry and windy weather has fanned the flames and sent smoke streaming across the border into Washington and Oregon. Wildfires have burned through 1.2 million acres of forest and grassland as of Wednesday, making this the second-worst wildfire year on record for British Columbia. And with the whole month of August to go — typically the worst month for wildfires in the province — it’s likely this year will continue its assault on the record books.
Massive smoke plumes has stretched from British Columbia to Oregon as wildfires rage.
Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
The blazes in British Columbia are the latest in a fiery game of ring-around-the-rosy happening in the northern stretches of the world's forests. With each passing year, destructive fires are destroying more and more forests of spruce, fir, larch and other trees that spread across Russia, Canada and Alaska and northern Europe.
The unprecedented burn is a symptom of rising temperatures in a region that has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the world. And because those forests contain some of the largest forest stores of carbon on the planet, sending them up in smoke will only increase the impacts of climate change. Earlier this year, boreal forests in Siberia were a hot spot for fire activity. But now it’s the British Columbia montane forest's turn to burn. Lightning kickstarted 140 fires in early July, according to Mike Flannigan, a wildfire expert at the University of Alberta.
“Any fire management organization is pretty good with dealing with 5 to 10 fires, but you can't deal with 140 fires starting in one day,” he said. “It's been hot and dry ever since and occasionally windy.” Those winds, in particular, have whipped flames across meadows and over mountain ridges making it difficult for firefighters to control an ever-expanding series of blazes. Through Wednesday, the province has seen 868 wildfires this year including 123 active fires.
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http://www.climatecentral.org/news/british-columbia-second-worst-wildfire-season-climate-21684