As Canada’s forests burn, climate change scientists warn the increasingly warm planet will continue to take part in fuelling more frequent and violent wildfires. That is their forecast now, but how did their predictions hold up over the past decades? “We are following the trend that scientists have predicted for some time,” says the director of research on adaptation at the Canadian Climate Institute Ryan Ness. CTV News archives shows that research two decades ago linked climate and a rise in fire frequencies. A 2006 television report points to a study that concluded new evidence showed climate change, not forest management and logging, was the main factor behind a spike of wildfires in California. “We see this increase in fire frequency is well correlated with warming temperatures and the arrival of earlier springs in the last 16 or 17 years compared with previous decades,” said fire ecologist Thomas Swetnam, at the time. Ten years ago, as 196 countries signed on to the Paris Climate Agreement that aimed to curb global warming, a study in the Climatic Change journal projected that the annual frequency of fire spread days in Canada could increase by 35 to 400 per cent by 2050, with the greatest increases in Alberta and Saskatchewan. “We can look back to papers published in the 1990s that predict an increase in area burned mainly because of climate change and rising temperatures,” says research scientist at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Nathan Gillett. Statistics from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) show that trend is proving to be a reality on the ground, not just a hypothesis. “Winters are shorter, there is less snow to melt and keep our forest moist in the spring. Extreme heat further dries out the forests and turns them into fuel for intensifying wildfires,” says Ness. The Gault Nature Reserve, a McGill University-owned site an hour’s drive from Montreal, aims to protect more than 1,000 hectares of natural forest and a trail network. Evidence of the dry conditions is on display. “It can really spark, and you never know the consequences of throwing a cigarette or a campsite that is not well maintained,” says McGill’s David Maneli, associate director at the reserve. To avoid risks, smoking is banned on the site. Maneli also says hikers who come to take in the majestic sights on trails that lead them to the top of a mountain, also learn valuable lessons about the need to protect forests. So far this year, wildfires have burned more than 7.3 million hectares, more than double the ten-year average for this time of the year. “What we would hope is that people would take these wildfire seasons as a sign that things are not right, and that indeed projections and predictions of scientists are coming to pass. They were accurate,” says Ness. And now, scientists warn if the trend continue, the planet will continue to burn even hotter and help spread wildfires.
