Chinese scientists calculate 1 billion-tonne carbon dioxide emissions cost of Canadian wildfires
- Canadian government figures suggest emissions from disaster nearly double that of country’s total greenhouse gases from human activity in 2021
- Chinese fire expert says mass wildfires ’have an undeniable impact on global climate warming’
The area burned in Canada’s fire season this year is the largest on record, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC). It reported that by the end of July, 129,800 sq km (50,100 square miles) of land had burned so far this year, compared to 14,700 sq km for the whole of 2022.
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The emissions from the wildfires are nearly double those of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions from human activity in 2021, based on figures from the government’s Environment and Climate Change Canada.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) reported that the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) scientists involved in the research used remote sensing to assess rapid emissions based on emission intensity and the area burned.
Liu Zhihua, an expert in forest fires at the IAE and lead on the study, said emissions from these fires “have an undeniable impact on global climate warming”.
The scientists also estimated that the greenhouse effect of nitrous oxide and methane emitted from the fires is equivalent to 110 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. With the burning of permafrost, further stored methane could be released.