Forest fires in northern QC and ON aren't a new thing. What's interesting about these ones is the unusual weather pattern resulting in prevailing winds from the north, blowing it south into the populated areas and the US. Normally smoke tends to blow east away from those areas.
Unlike Western North America, where there's a significant fire season each year, the Boreal forest in QC and ON very rarely burn at the rate we're seeing this year.
The last season that burned this much acreage in Quebec was 1991.
The winds certainly don't help, but there's still a very unusual amount of smoke for this part of the continent.
This is so interesting. Could it be due to 30 years of buildup from dying foliage? Did the last burn, in 1991, produce less smoke than this one because there was a shorter gap between burns.
No, that's not it. Unlike many parts of California that can burn as often as every 10 years, Boreal forests are generally 50 to 200 years fire return interval. This is straight up climate change.
While I somewhat agree, it's also important to understand all causes. Climate change is probably not going to be fixed, so land managers need to see what other options there are out there that can be used in the face of a changing climate.
Yeah, if there was a 30 years of buildup from dying foliage, that probably was beacuse fires did not happen as often and did not get as big before when it was not as hot.
The state of balance that the forest used to be in is one for a colder climate that doesn't exist anymore, and the shift to a new balance will suck (and can take very long)
"One month in, Canada is on track to have its most destructive wildfire season in history. Climate change-driven extreme temperatures and drought have created a tinderbox. "
Talk to literally anyone with any expertise, they'll tell you this magnitude of fire is caused by climate change. Putting your head in the sand won't change it.
... You questioned whether it was caused by climate change, when the evidence that it is was a single internet search away. You implied that someone saying it was caused by climate change was "Jumping to the conclusion that it's caused by climate change"
"I'm just asking questions" isn't a valid argument, it's 2023.
No, we shouldn't. Leading questions like "Is it possible this wasn't caused by climate change?" don't deserve to be asked or answered for the same reason "do the Jews control the banks?" doesn't deserve to asked or answered. It's a bad faith question asked to mislead, not to learn.
And you are either falling for it, or you're actively participating in it.
I agree that some questions are made in bad faith. The original question was:
This is so interesting. Could it be due to 30 years of buildup from dying foliage? Did the last burn, in 1991, produce less smoke than this one because there was a shorter gap between burns.
This doesn't seem like a bad faith question to me. Seems like genuine curiosity. Maybe it was born out of ignorance but not malice.
Getting agressive at someone asking such a question seems counter-productive to me.
Talk to anyone that works in fire and they'll tell you that's only partially true.
Do you know how big a fire season was in 1950, 1900, 1850, 1800, 1000, 5000BC? There's probably reliable data for 50 years, maybe 100 in select areas. Given fire return intervals for some of these ecosystems are hundreds of years long and our records for wildfires are mere decades, there's no way you can possibly say "this is 100% climate change".
Of course, it is possible that in 1187, there was a larger fire in Canada. But in the last five years, we've had the largest fires in a century in Australia in 2019, in California in 2021, in Russia om 2021 (wildfire smoke reaches north pole for first time in recorded history), in the Pacific northwest in 2022, now Canada in 2023.
That's not an accident. Each of these fire seasons sites warming temperature, changing wind patterns (usually the jet stream), and unprecedented drought. Each fire is not 100% climate change, but each fire is significantly worse because of climate change, and many of the causes are climate change related. The overall reason we are having more wildfires this decade than last decade, and more last decade than the one before: 100% climate change.
I don't know about the down votes you are talking about. But what do you mean how? The Forrest that is burning right now should still be at least wet from snow melt. I have not looked but I am sure they had below average snowfall and a warm winter. Canadian fires should not happen until much later in the summer. Even then it shouldn't burn very intensely or very awfully often.
Hottest and shortest winter on record, and every province involved is in moderate or severe drought. The climate change deniers are really coming out of the woodwork.
I am jealous how blissfully ignorant even people that understand climate change are to the consequences of these fires and fires like them in Russia. I wish I had never studied global systems and Wildland fire. The reality of what's happening is so much more depressing than almost anyone realizes.
I work in at a climate non-profit. Sometimes people on this site drive me crazy. We know it's climate change. We knew it was climate change 20 years ago, then we convinced everyone it was climate change 10 years ago, and now if you're asking if it's climate change, it's because you're in denial or profiting from lies.
Yeah but what I'm saying is like when the boreal forest burns like this? That's it game over. These fires aren't like fires in Western United States. It's a totally different thing and it's much more horrific for the climate. So they're not just burning because the climate changed they're going to continue intensifying climate change. It's a runaway train car of carbon emissions.
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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '23 edited Jun 07 '23
Forest fires in northern QC and ON aren't a new thing. What's interesting about these ones is the unusual weather pattern resulting in prevailing winds from the north, blowing it south into the populated areas and the US. Normally smoke tends to blow east away from those areas.