The latest report on drought conditions for Canada is dire, with over 70% of the country enduring abnormally dry or moderate to extreme drought conditions amid one of its worst wildfire seasons on record, according to a report from Daily Commercial News. Researchers with an independent, nonpartisan think tank say this year is a sign of things to come.
This summer's drought conditions are posing problems for farmers in Canada, putting pressure on public water supplies and exacerbating the country's challenging wildfire season. In late August, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre reported that 4,797 wildfires had burned over 19 million acres so far this year in Canada. Year to date, more than 7 million acres have burned, compared to the same point last year. This is the second-worst wildfire season on record for the country.
Julienne Morissette, Natural Resources Canada's director of Wildland Fire Research, believes there is a "high likelihood" of fires that were burning in August could continue to burn, or at least smolder, "well into autumn," per Reuters.
Canadian wildfires have triggered numerous air quality alerts already this year in the United States, as plumes of wildfire smoke have drifted south of the border. A prolonged wildfire season in Canada raises concerns that more alerts will be coming.
"This year is a sign, a signal of the types of conditions we will experience more frequently and that we need to be prepared for moving forward," said Ryan Ness, the Canadian Climate Institute for Climate Choices' director of adaptation, per Daily Commercial News. "Water efficiency is going to be critical -- making the best use out of the water that we have rather than, say, spraying it away to water lawns in urban areas."
Drought has recently expanded in other sections of North America. A large portion of the United States is also experiencing growing drought conditions. The latest U.S. Drought Monitor revealed an increase in the areas of the country experiencing three out of the four levels of drought. The West is seeing the worst drought conditions. Around two-thirds of the region is in at least a moderate drought, with nearly half of the West in either a severe, extreme, or exceptional drought.
At the end of the last week of meteorological summer, there were more than 19,000 wildland firefighters and support personnel battling 48 large active wildfires burning across portions of 11 states. All but one of those states were in the western U.S. There have been over 46,000 fires this year in the country that have charred over 4 million acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Collectively, the large fires burning during the final week of summer have consumed nearly 1 million acres.
The United States Geological Survey says our warming world is linked to several types of drought. "Climate change interacts with droughts in many ways," according to the USGS. "Some regions are experiencing warmer, drier conditions than they have in the past, leading to less rainfall (meteorological drought) or snowpack (snow drought).
"Over time, this can cause water sources like lakes, streams, and underground aquifers to dry up (hydrological drought). This, in turn, can lead to water shortages in human communities (socioeconomic drought) and agricultural systems (agricultural drought). It can also damage plant and animal communities in the region (ecological drought)."
Our overheating planet is supercharging droughts, which are a key driver that is raising the risk and severity of wildfires.
"The historical and presettlement relationships between drought and wildfire are well-documented in North America, with forest fire occurrence and area clearly increasing in response to drought," said researchers with the U.S. Forest Service. "There is also evidence that drought interacts with other controls (forest productivity, topography, fire weather, management activities) to affect fire intensity, severity, extent, and frequency."