Extreme temperatures seen in 2023 were equivalent to some climate projections for 2050, says the study.
The largest study of Canada's catastrophic 2023 wildfire season concludes it is "inescapable" that the record burn was caused by extreme heat and parching drought, while adding the amount of young forests consumed could make recovery harder.
That season burned 150,000 square kilometres -- seven times the historical average -- forced 232,000 Canadians from their homes and required help from 5,500 firefighters from around the world, as well as national resources and the military. Smoke drifted as far as western Europe. The paper finds the long periods of hot and dry weather were worsened by high-pressure zones that blocked the normal movement of air normally driven by the jet stream, a high-altitude river of air circling the planet that drives much of Earth's weather. Most places in Canada experience an average of 14 days under such immobile high-pressure systems. In 2023, areas that suffered the worst fires had as many as 60.
The fires also burned more than 10,000 square kilometres of forest that had already burned within the last three decades. "If a young forest is not at the stage where it would naturally propagate, you may have those species being eliminated from the landscape," Jain said.
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