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STORY: :: BC Wildfire Service

Wildfires in Canada’s forests last year released more greenhouse gases than some of the world’s largest emitting countries.

That’s according to a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Fires scorched about 37 million acres across the country, or about 4% of Canada’s forests.

That adds up to 647 megatons of carbon, more than seven of the ten biggest national emitters in 2022.

Study author Brendan Byrne is an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"In 2023, the carbon emitted by fires in Canada was far outside the previous record." // "Like it would rank fourth after the U.S., China and India."

Climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, is leading to hotter and drier conditions, which propels extreme wildfires.

Byrne says 2023 could become Canada’s new normal:

BYRNE: “…if we look at climate projections, by the time we get to the 2050s, we start to see this as a normal summer for Canadian forests.”

:: BC Wildfire Service

The findings add to concerns about depending on the world’s forests to act as a long-term carbon sink for industrial emissions, when fires could be making the problem worse.

Canada does not include natural phenomena like wildfires in its annual greenhouse gas emissions inventory, according to a 2021 strategy.

So the fear is the global carbon budget may be based on inaccurate calculations.

That budget is the estimated amount of greenhouse gases the world can keep emitting while holding warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

BYRNE: "Those estimates are very uncertain. And so if we see these kind of big changes where fires become more common in the boreal forests, we might not see as much carbon taken up from these natural ecosystems as we expect... keeping the carbon dioxide to a certain level will then require corresponding reductions in the allowable emissions we have."