Canada

It’ll be the worst wildfire season on record. So will 2025, 2026… all the way until we stop cooking the planet

It's unlikely 2024 will be worse than this year simply because this year was so exceptionally bad across the whole country. It's not common for us to see problems coast to coast, if only because there are multiple factors that need to be bad for serious fire behaviour and it's hard to get those to line up everywhere at once. When we talk about bad fire years, it's usually due to a few provinces being bad, not every province.

That said, it will probably be bad, and 2023 probably won't be the worst year in the next decade. Climate change is getting worse, forest management is slow to fix, and we already have so many communities in the trees that interface fires are practically a given.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Dry conditions and warmer-than-usual temperatures helped fuel a long and unrelenting wildfire season that, to date, has burned more than 17,500,000 hectares, a 647 per cent increase over the 10-year average.

Tens of thousands of residents were forced to flee, and six firefighters lost their lives battling the seemingly endless flames.

Added to that, we're also in the midst of an El Niño — a cyclical warming in the Pacific Ocean that, coupled with the atmosphere, can cause a rise in the global temperature — and that means next summer could see more of the same.

"We already broke various global temperature records in the summer," said Greg Flato, a senior research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC).

With all this information at hand, Flannigan says, looking forward, a national firefighting agency would help tackle the rise in wildfire risk.

They can also reduce the risk of wildfire by ensuring that vegetation doesn't touch nearby power lines, by keeping grass cut short, and cleaning roofs regularly, as recommended by B.C.

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