The carbon emissions caused by Canada's forest fires are comparable to the emissions of other countries around the world, and Europe too has suffered badly from fires. Climate change is making the situation worse still. In Canada, 7.3 million hectares of forest have already burned this year, equivalent to more than a quarter of Finland's forestry land area.
This year's forest fires are the second most destructive in Canada's history. Most of the fires are raging in the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario in the central part of the country. According to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, there are more than 700 active forest fires and more than half of them are burning out of control.
Until now, 2023 was the most destructive year in the history of Canada's forest fires, when a total of 15 million hectares burned, roughly four per cent of Canada's forest area.
According to an article in the journal Nature, two years ago the fires released 647 teragrams, or 647 million tonnes, of carbon into the atmosphere. That is equivalent to 2.4 gigatonnes, or 2,400 million tonnes, of carbon dioxide. This volume can be compared with the annual carbon emissions of the world's largest countries; only India, China and the United States of America pollute more.
Finland's annual emissions are about one fiftieth of those produced by Canada's forest fires.
The destructive power of forest fires is growing
According to NASA's website, in the 21st century large forest fires have become more frequent, and bigger and more destructive than before, which is regarded as a result of climate change. Their impact is most pronounced in the boreal zone, where a large share of the world's forests is located.
The destructive force of fires has increased most in the conifer forests of the western United States and in the boreal forests of North America and Russia. The main reason is warmer winters. The observed trend effectively “feeds” on itself: as the climate warms, forest fires become more frequent, which in turn produces more carbon emissions that continue to “warm” the climate.
Between 2001 and 2023, global carbon emissions from forest fires rose by 60 per cent. Forest fire emissions in Eurasia and North America have almost tripled.
The global forest fire situation is closely monitored in real time by satellites. For example, https://www.globalforestwatch.org/map/ and NASA have open websites on which information about the situation is continuously updated.
Forest fires in Europe
Forest fires have become more frequent each year in Europe as well. Since much of Europe suffered from drought this spring, it was possible to predict greater problems in the summer season.
The scale of forest fires in Europe differs from those raging in Canada. This summer's forest fires in Europe have spread across roughly 350,000 hectares and have released 11.45 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, reports the European Commission.
By the same point last year the burned area was half as large again, despite it being the hottest year in the Earth's history. In Europe, nine per cent more forest land burned than the average for the period from 2006 to 2023.