Fire-breathing clouds: How intense wildfires can create their own deadly weather systems

Copyright AP Photo/Pablo Garcia

By Euronews Green
Published on 02/10/2025 - 

Until now, scientists have struggled to reproduce this weather phenomenon in their models.

Some wildfires are large enough and hot enough to create their own weather systems.

Scientists estimate that tens to hundreds of storms created by these blazes occur around the world each year. The trend of increasingly severe fires, fuelled by climate change, means that the number is likely to grow.

These wildfire-born storms are becoming a growing part of fire seasons around the world with lasting impacts on air quality, weather and climate. They also make wildfires extremely hot and chaotic, wreaking havoc on firefighting strategies.

Until now, experts have struggled to reproduce this weather phenomenon in their models. But a new study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, has provided a breakthrough which could help predict them and understand what impact they have on the global climate.

How does a wildfire create its own weather system?\

Burning vegetation heats the air near the ground, which then rises. Cooler air rushes in to fill the void left by the rising air, generating wind patterns.

When the conditions are right, the wildfire’s rapidly rising plumes of hot smoke and air cool to form a cloud, known as a pyrocumulonimbus or “pyroCBs”. NASA scientists have referred to them as the “fire-breathing dragon of clouds”.

If enough energy is released and the updraft intensifies, it creates a thunderstorm that is capable of producing downdrafts that spread the flames and dangerous lightning that can ignite new fires.

They can produce dry storms with lightning that strikes without bringing significant rain, making them particularly dangerous as there's no precipitation to help extinguish blazes sparked by the lightning strikes.

Eventually, this thunderstorm will begin to die, and what goes up must come down. Downdrafts created by the decaying storm can create erratic winds near the ground that spread the fire in ways that are difficult to predict.
Wildfire thunderstorms can have deadly consequences

In 2020, California’s Creek wildfire was so intense that it started to produce its own weather system. Extreme heat from the blaze created a thunderhead - a cumulonimbus cloud that forms before a thunderstorm. This endangered firefighters and made containment elusive as lightning strikes rained down and winds fanned the roaring flames.

Pedrógão Grande, a small municipality in central Portugal, faced a similar scenario in 2017. A huge plume of smoke from a wildfire grew until thunder clouds began forming high up in the atmosphere. It was one of the first recorded pyrocumulonimbus in Western Europe.

A fire fighting aircraft is almost obscured by smoke and steam as it drops water over a fire outside the village of Pedrogao Grande central Portugal, Monday, June 19, 2017. 

AP Photo/Paulo Duarte

Eventually, the roughly 13-kilometre-high column of dark smoke clouds collapsed and sent cold air to the base of the fire. In an investigation commissioned by the Portuguese government, villagers described it as "a sudden 'bomb' of fire spreading tongues of flames and sparks in all directions".

The fires in Pedrógão Grande killed 66 people and injured 250 others. An estimated 24,000 hectares of land were burned, and more than 500 houses were partially or totally destroyed over five days.

A world-first breakthrough

In a brand new study, scientists have successfully reproduced the timing, height and strength of the thunderhead seen during the Creek Fire - one of the largest pyrocumulonimbus clouds seen in the US, according to NASA. Their models also replicated the multiple thunderstorms produced by California’s 2021 Dixie Fire, which occurred under very different circumstances.

“This work is a first-of-its-kind breakthrough in Earth system modelling,” according to lead scientist Ziming Ke from the Desert Research Institute in Nevada, US.

Earth's water system is spiralling with deadly swings between too little and too much, warns WMO

Smoke from Canada's 2023 wildfires linked to more than 80,000 early deaths worldwide, study warns

Ke adds that this “breakthrough” could improve national resilience and preparedness as scientists are better able to predict these storms. It may also help us to understand what impact they have on a global scale.

When a pyrocumulonimbus cloud forms, it injects smoke and moisture into the upper atmosphere at levels similar to a small volcanic eruption. This impacts the way Earth’s atmosphere receives and reflects light, with pollution from fires persisting for months or longer. If this is transported to polar regions, it could accelerate ice and snow melt.

With wildfire seasons intensifying globally, the ability to predict and understand these fire-generated storms may prove crucial in protecting both lives and the planet's climate systems.

 

Scientists successfully recreate wildfire-induced thunderstorms in Earth system models for the first time

The breakthrough enhances scientific understanding of the dangerous storms and their long-term impacts on the climate

Desert Research Institute

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

A developing pyrocumulonimbus cloud above Oregon's Gulch Fire, part of the Beaver Complex Fire, in 2014. 

view more 

Credit: NASA

On September 5, 2020, California’s Creek Fire grew so severe that it began producing it’s own weather system. The fire’s extreme heat produced an explosive thunderhead that spewed lightning strikes and further fanned the roaring flames, making containment elusive and endangering the lives of firefighters on the ground. These wildfire-born storms have become a growing part of fire seasons across the West, with lasting impacts on air quality, weather, and climate. Until now, scientists have struggled to replicate them in Earth system models, hindering our ability to predict their occurrence and understand their impacts on the global climate. Now, a new study provides a breakthrough by developing a novel wildfire-Earth system modeling framework.  

The research, published September 25th in Geophysical Research Letters, represents the first successful simulation of these wildfire-induced storms, known as pyrocumulonimbus clouds, within an Earth system model. Led by DRI scientist Ziming Ke, the study successfully reproduced the observed timing, height, and strength of the Creek Fire’s thunderhead – one of the largest known pyrocumulonimbus clouds seen in the U.S., according to NASA. The model also replicated multiple thunderstorms produced by the 2021 Dixie Fire, which occurred under very different conditions. Accounting for the way that cloud development is aided by moisture lofted into the higher reaches of the atmosphere by terrain and winds is key to their findings.   

“This work is a first-of-its-kind breakthrough in Earth system modeling,” Ke said. “It not only demonstrates how extreme wildfire events can be studied within Earth system models, but also establishes DRI’s growing capability in Earth system model development — a core strength that positions the institute to lead future advances in wildfire–climate science.”  

When a pyrocumulonimbus cloud forms, it injects smoke and moisture into the upper atmosphere at magnitudes comparable to those of small volcanic eruptions, impacting the way Earth’s atmosphere receives and reflects sunlight. These fire aerosols can persist for months or longer, altering stratospheric composition. When transported to polar regions, they affect Antarctic ozone dynamics, modify clouds and albedo, and accelerate ice and snow melt, reshaping polar climate feedbacks. Scientists estimate that tens to hundreds of these storms occur globally each year, and that the trend of increasingly severe wildfires will only grow their numbers. Until now, failing to incorporate these storms into Earth system models has hindered our ability to understand this natural disturbance’s impact on global climate. 

The research team also included scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, U.C. Irvine, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Their breakthrough leveraged the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) to successfully capture the complex interplay between wildfires and the atmosphere.  

“Our team developed a novel wildfire–Earth system modeling framework that integrates high-resolution wildfire emissions, a one-dimensional plume-rise model, and fire-induced water vapor transport into DOE’s cutting-edge Earth system model,” Ke said. “This breakthrough advances high-resolution modeling of extreme hazards to improve national resilience and preparedness, and provides the framework for future exploration of these storms at regional and global scales within Earth system models.” 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

More information: The full study, Simulating Pyrocumulonimbus Clouds Using a Multiscale Wildfire Simulation Framework, is available from Geophysical Research Letters at https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL114025 

Study authors include: Ziming Ke (DRI/Lawrence Livermore National Lab), Qi Tang (Lawrence Livermore National Lab), Jishi Zhang (Lawrence Livermore National Lab), Yang Chen (UC Irvine), James Randerson (UC Irvine), Jianfeng Li (Pacific NW National Lab), Yunyan Zhang (Lawrence Livermore National Lab) 

About DRI 

We are Nevada’s non-profit research institute, founded in 1959 to empower experts to focus on science that matters. We work with communities across the state — and the world — to address their most pressing scientific questions. We’re proud that our scientists continuously produce solutions that better human and environmental health.   

Scientists at DRI are encouraged to follow their research interests across the traditional boundaries of scientific fields, collaborating across DRI and with scientists worldwide. All faculty support their own research through grants, bringing in nearly $5 to the Nevada economy for every $1 of state funds received. With more than 600 scientists, engineers, students, and staff across our Reno and Las Vegas campuses, we conducted more than $52 million in sponsored research focused on improving peoples’ lives in 2024 alone. 

At DRI, science isn’t merely academic — it’s the key to future-proofing our communities and building a better world. For more information, please visit www.dri.edu. 

---

Journal

Geophysical Research Letters

Article Title

Simulating Pyrocumulonimbus Clouds Using a Multiscale Wildfire Simulation Framework

Article Publication Date

25-Sep-2025

 

Naval Research Laboratory and NASA launch joint effort to study wildfire-induced thunderstorms

Naval Research Laboratory

LinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As wildfires grow more intense and frequent across the globe, scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) are working to better understand a rare but powerful byproduct of these blazes: pyrocumulonimbus clouds, or pyroCbs.

“These are thunderstorms that develop directly over large and intense wildfires,” said David Peterson, Ph.D., a meteorologist with NRL. “They act like giant chimneys, rapidly accelerating smoke particles high into the atmosphere. They’re among the darkest, dirtiest storm clouds you’ll ever see.”

Unlike typical thunderstorms, pyroCbs can inject smoke into the upper atmosphere, potentially altering weather patterns, reducing visibility, and interfering with operations critical to U.S. military readiness.

“Sometimes that smoke can reach the lower stratosphere,” Peterson said. “This can affect how solar radiation is absorbed or reflected and creates a significant gap in our forecasting capabilities.”

To address that gap, NRL and NASA have teamed up to launch a new field experiment: the Injected Smoke and Pyrocumulonimbus Experiment known as INSPYRE. Led by NRL and funded by NASA, INSPYRE is a multi-year collaborative effort aimed at improving predictive weather modeling through detailed analysis of wildfire-induced atmospheric behavior.

“Reliable weather forecasting is essential for effective mission planning,” Peterson said. “The work we do at NRL focuses specifically on atmospheric hazards that impact warfighters, especially aerosol particles like wildfire smoke and their effects on radiation and visibility.”

INSPYRE will collect data on how and where smoke plumes travel, and at what altitudes, with the goal of enhancing models that inform Department of Defense operations and disaster response.

“It’s a project where many different groups will benefit,” said Peterson. “We’re proud to be at the center of this critical research. It’s an exciting time for all of us at NRL.”

 

About the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory

NRL is a scientific and engineering command dedicated to research that drives innovative advances for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps from the seafloor to space and in the information domain. NRL, located in Washington, D.C. with major field sites in Stennis Space Center, Mississippi; Key West, Florida; Monterey, California, and employs approximately 3,000 civilian scientists, engineers and support personnel.

For more information, contact NRL Corporate Communications at (202) 480-3746 or nrlpao@nrl.navy.mil. Please reference package number at top of press release.

###

A Canadian Wildfire Grew So Intense It Made Its Own Weather

WORD OF THE DAY; PYROCUMULONIMBUS

Austyn Gaffney
Updated Sat, July 27, 2024 

A helicopter buckets water onto smouldering fires outside Jasper, Alberta, Canada, on Friday July 26, 2024. AMBER BRACKEN/Pool via REUTERS


Officials said Thursday that they feared as much as half the town of Jasper, Alberta, had been destroyed by wildfires so intense they generated their own weather.

“It’s a sad day here because Jasper is such a gorgeous place,” Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, said Thursday.

The town is the gateway to Jasper National Park, a crown jewel of the Canadian parks system. At least 25,000 residents and tourists were evacuated from their homes before firefighters and emergency personnel also had to flee toxic smoke. The mayor called the destruction “almost beyond comprehension.”

That fire was worsened by a pyrocumulonimbus, or a fire-generated thunderstorm, according to Flannigan.

“They’re by far the most intense fires in the world,” he said.

What are these storms?

A pyrocumulonimbus is a huge, smoke-filled thunderstorm generated when the intense heat from wildfires combines with atmospheric conditions ripe for storm formation.

Although these heat-generated storms don’t produce much rain, they can create other types of weather such as hail, strong winds, lightning and tornadoes. Tornadolike winds were reported near the Park fire, which is burning in California.

These storms can also create smoke plumes that can surpass the cruising altitude of a commercial aircraft. They act like a giant chimney: Smoke is pulled up from the wildfire and as the air escapes, more air moves quickly in at the ground level, feeding the fire more oxygen before funneling up and away.

This feedback loop can push out so many smoke particles that the result can be similar to a volcanic eruption.

In the 2019-20 Black Summer fire season in Australia, for example, 38 such storms, also known as pyroCbs, were observed. They injected enough smoke into the atmosphere that scientists likened it to a nuclear winter.

Wildfires that are exacerbated by these types of storms can become nearly impossible to put out. They’re also more hazardous for firefighters, creating more extreme wind conditions and darkening skies.

“They tried to put helicopters on it,” Flannigan said of the wildfires that fueled at least two of these storms this week near Jasper. “They couldn’t stop it, which is unfortunate because it led to a good chunk of the town burning down.”

Why are fire-generated storms happening more often?

Unlike the study of other extreme weather events such as heat waves and hurricanes, the study of these storms is relatively new in scientific circles.

Because data only dates to 2013, it’s difficult to determine a trend, said David Peterson, a meteorologist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey, California.

“There’s been an increasing number of large and intense wildfires in North America in recent years that likely would suggest there would be more pyroCbs,” Peterson said. “But we still don’t know enough.”

But over the past decade, the number of these storms has grown.

In 2017, four pyroCbs in British Columbia created a volcanic-scale smoke plume that traveled around the globe, lasting more than six months. Then, the Black Summer in Australia sent a smoke plume up that lasted more than year. In 2021, 100 pyroCbs were recorded worldwide, but 2023 shattered that record with 169.

Western Canada seems to be a hot spot. The country’s 2023 fire season spawned 142 of these storms, almost tripling its previous record of 50 in 2021.

Although research has yet to link these types of storms to climate change, studies show that as climate change increases how often extreme wildfires happen, they could also become more frequent.

“In a general sense, if you have more fires, you’ll have more pyroCbs because there are more opportunities to have them sink up, but it depends on atmospheric conditions, too,” Peterson said. “An intense wildfire definitely increases the odds.”

More than 50 pyroCbs have been observed in western North America so far this year, which already puts 2024 in the top three years in the 12-year-old record.

When will we know more?

In October, Peterson and his partners will begin a five-year, NASA-funded study to better understand the effect these wildfires could have on our climate.

“The big open question right now is what is the role of pyroCbs in a warming climate system?” Peterson said. “What are the effects of pushing smoke up extremely high into the stratosphere, especially when smoke that high persists for a year?”

The study will use two NASA aircraft: one that can fly up to 70,000 feet above the storm, requiring the pilot to wear a spacesuit, and a second that can fly through the storm’s upper clouds. The aircraft will collect data in the summers of 2026 and 2027.

In the meantime, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory is also working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies to develop a more sophisticated warning system. The science is complex because it merges wildfire science with thunderstorm meteorology.

“We need to develop a warning capability for fires that are more likely to generate pyroCbs because it means something different if you’re fighting it, evacuating people, and predicting where the smoke is going,” Peterson said. “Right now, we’re in catch-up mode.”

c.2024 The New York Times Company

Posted in:  Weather  

Posted on:  15 July 2020

Read time:  1 minute

Share:

Pyrocumulonimbus Clouds

Pyrocumulonimbus clouds are thunder clouds created by intense heat from the Earth’s surface. They are formed similarly to cumulonimbus clouds, but the intense heat that results in the vigorous updraft comes from fire, either large wildfires or volcanic eruptions. So it is, for this reason, the prefix ‘pyro’ is used – meaning fire in Greek.

Pyrocumulonimbus clouds were reported during the Australian bushfires in late 2019/early 2020, and a number have more recently been observed in Siberia with the Arctic heatwave. These intense wildfires reach temperatures above 800°C and can essentially create their own weather systems.

The hot smoke released from these fires acts as a plume of heat into the atmosphere. Hot and very buoyant, the air in the plume rapidly rises. As it rises, it cools and expands. Once cooled sufficiently, water vapour condenses on the ash to form a grey or brown cloud above the plume. At this stage, the cloud is called a pyrocumulus. Still, if enough water vapour is available and the updraft intensifies, it can develop into a pyrocumulonimbus cloud. Then, similar to other thunderstorms, there may be a downburst of intense localised rain. This rain can create a downdraft of cooler air, which can then carry embers from the fire, igniting spot fires away from the source. In some cases, dry lightning from these storms can strike without rain, further spreading the wildfire. They have also been known to dangerously generate fire tornadoes.

Pyrocumulonimbus clouds are thought to be responsible for several aerosol pollutants (such as smoke and ash) trapped in the stratosphere and upper atmosphere. However, a paper by the American Meteorological Society, ‘The Untold Story of Pyrocumulonimbus’, re-evaluated the data from previous stratosphere studies to conclude that volcanic eruptions had been wrongly attributed to these pollutants. Dr Glenn K. Yue, one of the paper’s authors, stated in an article by NASA that one of the reasons for this misinterpretation was that it was initially thought the only force strong enough to penetrate the tropopause in a short period was a volcanic eruption.

As our climate changes, these unusual but significant storms could occur more frequently due to hotter and drier conditions increasing the risk of wildfires.

 

Wash U researchers quantify solar absorption by black carbon in fire clouds

New findings from Chakrabarty lab will help make climate models more accurate as massive wildfires become more common

\

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

In an actively warming world, large-scale wildfires are becoming more common. These wildfires emit black carbon to our atmosphere, one of the most potent short-lived atmospheric warming agents. This is because of its strong sunlight absorption characteristics. But scientists have yet to get a handle on the extent of atmospheric warming caused by black carbon in pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) clouds that develop from high-intensity wildfires.

In their most extreme form, these wildfire clouds will inject smoke into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere where it can linger and impact stratospheric temperatures and composition for several months. Some of the details of that impact have been investigated now thanks to new research from Washington University in St. Louis’ Center for Aerosol Science & Engineering (CASE).

The research was led by Rajan Chakrabarty, a professor in WashU’s McKelvey School of Engineering and his former student Payton Beeler, now a Linus Pauling distinguished post-doctoral fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The study was published in Nature Communications.

“This work addresses a key challenge in quantifying black carbon’s radiative effect in the upper atmosphere,” Chakrabarty said.

The team made airborne measurements from within the upper portion of an active pyroCb thunderstorm in Washington state as part of the 2019 NOAA/NASA Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX-AQ) field campaign, he added.

“We considered the full complexity and diversity of the measured black carbon size and morphology on a per-particle basis for accurate estimation of its solar absorption. What we discovered is that a pyroCb black carbon particle absorbs visible sunlight two times as much as a nascent black carbon particle emitted from smaller fires and urban sources,” he said.

The authors uniquely combined measurements of black carbon mass and the thickness of organic coatings on individual particles in the plumes with a detailed single-particle optics model. They used a numerically exact particle-resolved model to calculate the black carbon optical properties and quantified how much light those black carbon particles are absorbing (and thus how much more heat they bring to the upper atmosphere).

In addition, the work highlights the unique light absorption properties of black carbon in pyroCbs clouds versus black carbon from wildfires that does not end up in pyroCbs and black carbon from urban sources.

The next step in this research is to take further measurements and do a more precise study of the black carbon behavior in the stratosphere.

Black carbon injected into the lower stratosphere by recent pyroCb events in Canada and Australia have traveled around the globe, persisted for months, and altered dynamic circulation and radiative forcing across large regions, Chakrabarty noted. These thunderstorms are deemed responsible for 10% to 25% of the black carbon in the present day lower stratosphere, with impacts extending to both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Scientists are increasingly observing how much it impacts climate but there is more to learn.

“We need more direct measurements of pyroCb black carbon light absorption measurements to better constrain climate model predictions of stratospheric warming,” Chakrabarty said.

 

Beeler P,  Kumar J,  Schwarz JP, Adachi K, Fierce L, Perring AE, Katich JM, Chakrabarty RK. Light absorption enhancement of black carbon in a pyrocumulonimbus cloud. Nat Commun 15, 6243 (2024). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-50070-0

 

This research has been supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (grant nos. 80NSSC18K1414 and NNH20ZDA001N- ACCDAM), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (grant no. NA16OAR4310104), the National Science Foundation (grant nos. AGS-1455215 and AGS-1926817), the US Department of Energy (grant no. DE-SC0021011), and the Simons Foundation’s Mathematics and Physical Sciences division. L.F. was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric System Research (ASR) program via the Integrated Cloud, Land-Surface, and Aerosol System Study (ICLASS) Science Focus Area. Additional support was provided by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program (Linus Pauling Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship Program). Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is operated for DOE by Battelle Memorial Institute under contract DE-AC05-76RL01830.

---

JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-024-50070-0 

WE HAD A BROWN XMAS

Canada could face more record-breaking heat this year. How can we prepare for wildfires?

Low snowpack and higher temperatures forecast for El Niño year already raising wildfire concerns

CBC
Fri, January 5, 2024 

The Eagle Bluff Wildfire crosses the border from Washington State on July 30, prompting evacuation orders in Osoyoos, B.C. (Jesse Winter/Reuters)


The first week of January isn't usually wildfire season. But as 2024 began, more than 100 "zombie fires" were actively burning in British Columbia — holdovers from last summer that typically go dormant over winter.

"That is mind boggling to me. Just unheard of," said Lori Daniels, a professor with the University of British Columbia's department of forest and conservation sciences.

The warm, dry weather that capped off what is expected to be declared the planet's hottest year on record — and Canada's most destructive wildfire season by a longshot, with more than 6,500 fires burning close to 19 million hectares — is not over.

With the global El Niño weather system continuing through this spring, forecasts suggest 2024 could be even hotter — prompting wildfire and public policy experts to call for more wildfire prevention efforts now.

"The whole concept of business as usual is out the window," said John Robinson, a professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto, adding governments, NGOs and social support organizations have to learn to be more adaptive.

"Unfortunately, response to disaster isn't a time where you get a lot of creative policy," he said. "We need proactive or pre-emptive response."

Why 2024 is already worrying

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) is projecting above-normal temperatures across the country at least through fall, and about 70 per cent above normal in April through June.

"There's really no indication of below normal or, until we get maybe to the late fall, even near normal," said Bill Merryfield, a research scientist with ECCC's Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis.

ECCC is also projecting below-normal snowpack across all provinces through spring, leading to drier conditions come summer. In December, snowpack was less than a quarter of what's normal across much of southern Canada, Merryfield said.

Where's winter? So far, it's been an 'unnatural' grey and foggy season


Warm, dry winter has increased the wildfire risk in Alberta

NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will release their official 2023 temperature numbers on Jan. 12, but all data so far indicates 2023 was the hottest on record globally.

Tom Di Liberto, climate scientist and public affairs specialist with NOAA, said when El Niño events straddle two years, it is typically the second year that ends up being hotter, indicating a strong possibility that temperatures could increase again in 2024. A recent example was 2016, the previous hottest year on record following El Niño.

"When you have back-to-back years of such extreme temperatures, it's kind of allowing the possibility to be a bit more severe," Di Liberto said.

Two people are pictured waiting for a boat ride across Shuswap lake to Celista from Sorrento, B.C., while evacuating from wildfires on Aug. 19. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

Kevin Hanna, director of the University of British Columbia's Centre for Environmental Assessment Research and a former wildfire fighter, says the increasingly extreme heat and drought conditions have led people in disaster-prone regions to develop a "fear of summer and what it will bring."

"Is this the summer where my farm or ranch gets hit? Is this the summer when my town has to evacuate? You see it on people's face, you hear it in their voice," " Hanna said. "I know ranchers who have lost property— terrible flood damage, terrible wildfire damage."

Protecting infrastructure

Daniels said it is time for governments to increase investment in programs to help people make their homes more fire resistant, and to ensure all new builds in fire-prone areas follow FireSmart principles like those laid out by Natural Resources Canada.

She said Canadians in fire-prone areas can implement these principles themselves by tidying up yards, making sure there is no burnable debris in the gutters or under decks, and reconfiguring gardens so rocks are closer to buildings and flammable vegetation is pulled further away.

She said communities across Canada should start making emergency plans of action before spring, and accepting that it's not a matter of "if, but when" fire is coming to their communities.

The Eagle Bluff Wildfire crosses the border from Washington State on July 30, prompting evacuation orders in Osoyoos, B.C. (Jesse Winter/Reuters)

Hanna said Canada needs to have a bigger conversation about prevention and managing risk by reducing the vulnerability of infrastructure, and suggests wildfire vulnerability assessments and considerations become "part of everything we do in the permitting and review process" for major infrastructure projects like pipelines, power lines, highways and railways.

A likely unpopular suggestion heading into a dry and drought-prone year is that we might have to rethink some routine summer activities Canadians take for granted, Hanna says, including potentially limiting access to certain parts of the backcountry.

"If we want to keep areas safe, we might have to say people aren't allowed to go there. Because some people do things they shouldn't do," Hanna said.

"One spark from an ATV or a hot muffler on a dirt bike or something is going to potentially cause a huge amount of trouble."

Michael Norton, director general of the Canadian Forest Service with Natural Resources Canada, said the federal government is working on preventative measures through programs like the Wildfire Resilient Futures Initiative, which is investing $285 million over five years with a focus on prevention and mitigation, including reinforcing the FireSmart Canada program.

Fighting fire with fire

Counterintuitively, more fire could help prevent the most destructive blazes this summer.

"[Fire] is maybe the only natural disaster, where on one hand, it's extremely destructive, and on the other hand, is part of the solution," Daniels said, adding that Canada's forest management has focused primarily on maximizing economic benefit, which has increased the landscape's fire vulnerability.

"We've just left too much woody debris down on the ground, and that's fueling these new fires. And it's killing regenerating young forests that are 20 and 30 years old," she said.

A firefighter watches a prescribed burn proceed near Lytton in 2014. (B.C. Wildfire Management Branch)

Norton, said prescribed burns, forest thinning and Indigenous cultural burning practices are an important piece of fire mitigation that fire managers are deploying more often.

"Prescribed fire is not is not putting something artificial onto the landscape. It's using something that is in fact part of nature, in a controlled way to reduce risks," he said.

"Part of the challenge that we've had in this country over many decades of fire management is a disproportionate emphasis on only fire suppression activities," Norton said.

"All the provinces and territories are increasingly trying to shift focus towards a greater emphasis on preventing human-caused wildfires in the first place, and proactively mitigating risks from fires before they occur."
Collaboration and local expertise

Hanna says it is important to identify institutional barriers that are preventing controlled burns from being done sooner, such as multiple levels of decision making spread across different agencies.

He said that applies to Canada's model of firefighting as well, which has become "very centralized" and "elitist," run by provincial bodies that do not always work as closely as they could with locals.

"I think we have to rediscover the value of local people, their expertise and knowledge. Particularly in parts of rural communities in Canada, remote communities in Canada, where there's a lot of folks who know the land, know how to run machinery, who can work in a collaborative way with forest wildfire services to to be proactive, as well as reactive," he said.

The burned remains of the Scotch Creek & Lee Creek Fire Department and community hall are seen in Scotch Creek, B.C. in September. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)

Those people also have a vested interest in protecting their homes and communities, but getting them on board can sometimes be a last-minute scramble.

"How can you deploy those resources quickly without going through a two-day procurement process or form-filling process? That's very important," Hanna said.

Norton said the federal government has recognized this and is committing more than $800 million to invest and train additional firefighters with a particular focus on Indigenous people, and working to bolster firefighting equipment on reserves.

"Our training funding is targeting a fairly local level," he said.

Five charts to help understand Canada's record-breaking wildfire season
Building on last year's lessons

Daniels said Canada's wildfire response has been strong, as evidenced by a lack of civilian deaths last year despite the massive destruction of property. She worries, however, that our past successes may be "one of our barriers to future adaptation."

The dangers to human life are also becoming evident, with eight firefighters losing their lives fighting wildfires across Canada in 2023.

"The firefighter deaths rocked the wildfire community across the country," Norton said.

Wildfire fighter in B.C. dies on front lines of largest fire in province's history


25-year-old from Ontario identified as wildfire fighter killed in B.C.

Apart from the sheer number and size of fires in 2023, firefighters are dealing with increasingly severe fire behaviour like the proliferation of pyrocumulonimbus clouds, thunderstorms created and driven by the heat of extreme fires that can sometimes create new fires.

But among the challenges, Norton points to some major federal successes. He said Canada brought in more than 5,600 firefighters from 12 other countries to help fight fires in 2023 and signed new agreements to ensure support from other countries moving forward.

The Canadian Forest Service also delivered new wildfire intelligence tactical mapping products to provinces and territories, and in 2023 the U.S. Department of Defense deployed FireGuard, a new high-tech fire detection system, to help Canada battle wildfires using real-time data from drones and satellites to help detect new flareups in remote areas for the first time.

"We had, under incredible pressure, had some quite striking successes that we are working very hard to learn from to be able to reproduce as and when necessary in the future," Norton said.

Canada could face more record-breaking heat this year. How can we prepare for wildfires?

Low snowpack and higher temperatures forecast for El Niño year already raising wildfire concerns

CBC
Fri, January 5, 2024 

The Eagle Bluff Wildfire crosses the border from Washington State on July 30, prompting evacuation orders in Osoyoos, B.C. (Jesse Winter/Reuters)


The first week of January isn't usually wildfire season. But as 2024 began, more than 100 "zombie fires" were actively burning in British Columbia — holdovers from last summer that typically go dormant over winter.

"That is mind boggling to me. Just unheard of," said Lori Daniels, a professor with the University of British Columbia's department of forest and conservation sciences.

The warm, dry weather that capped off what is expected to be declared the planet's hottest year on record — and Canada's most destructive wildfire season by a longshot, with more than 6,500 fires burning close to 19 million hectares — is not over.

With the global El Niño weather system continuing through this spring, forecasts suggest 2024 could be even hotter — prompting wildfire and public policy experts to call for more wildfire prevention efforts now.

"The whole concept of business as usual is out the window," said John Robinson, a professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto, adding governments, NGOs and social support organizations have to learn to be more adaptive.

"Unfortunately, response to disaster isn't a time where you get a lot of creative policy," he said. "We need proactive or pre-emptive response."

Why 2024 is already worrying

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) is projecting above-normal temperatures across the country at least through fall, and about 70 per cent above normal in April through June.

"There's really no indication of below normal or, until we get maybe to the late fall, even near normal," said Bill Merryfield, a research scientist with ECCC's Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis.

ECCC is also projecting below-normal snowpack across all provinces through spring, leading to drier conditions come summer. In December, snowpack was less than a quarter of what's normal across much of southern Canada, Merryfield said.

Where's winter? So far, it's been an 'unnatural' grey and foggy season


Warm, dry winter has increased the wildfire risk in Alberta

NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will release their official 2023 temperature numbers on Jan. 12, but all data so far indicates 2023 was the hottest on record globally.

Tom Di Liberto, climate scientist and public affairs specialist with NOAA, said when El Niño events straddle two years, it is typically the second year that ends up being hotter, indicating a strong possibility that temperatures could increase again in 2024. A recent example was 2016, the previous hottest year on record following El Niño.

"When you have back-to-back years of such extreme temperatures, it's kind of allowing the possibility to be a bit more severe," Di Liberto said.

Two people are pictured waiting for a boat ride across Shuswap lake to Celista from Sorrento, B.C., while evacuating from wildfires on Aug. 19. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

Kevin Hanna, director of the University of British Columbia's Centre for Environmental Assessment Research and a former wildfire fighter, says the increasingly extreme heat and drought conditions have led people in disaster-prone regions to develop a "fear of summer and what it will bring."

"Is this the summer where my farm or ranch gets hit? Is this the summer when my town has to evacuate? You see it on people's face, you hear it in their voice," " Hanna said. "I know ranchers who have lost property— terrible flood damage, terrible wildfire damage."

Protecting infrastructure

Daniels said it is time for governments to increase investment in programs to help people make their homes more fire resistant, and to ensure all new builds in fire-prone areas follow FireSmart principles like those laid out by Natural Resources Canada.

She said Canadians in fire-prone areas can implement these principles themselves by tidying up yards, making sure there is no burnable debris in the gutters or under decks, and reconfiguring gardens so rocks are closer to buildings and flammable vegetation is pulled further away.

She said communities across Canada should start making emergency plans of action before spring, and accepting that it's not a matter of "if, but when" fire is coming to their communities.

Hanna said Canada needs to have a bigger conversation about prevention and managing risk by reducing the vulnerability of infrastructure, and suggests wildfire vulnerability assessments and considerations become "part of everything we do in the permitting and review process" for major infrastructure projects like pipelines, power lines, highways and railways.

A likely unpopular suggestion heading into a dry and drought-prone year is that we might have to rethink some routine summer activities Canadians take for granted, Hanna says, including potentially limiting access to certain parts of the backcountry.

"If we want to keep areas safe, we might have to say people aren't allowed to go there. Because some people do things they shouldn't do," Hanna said.

"One spark from an ATV or a hot muffler on a dirt bike or something is going to potentially cause a huge amount of trouble."

Michael Norton, director general of the Canadian Forest Service with Natural Resources Canada, said the federal government is working on preventative measures through programs like the Wildfire Resilient Futures Initiative, which is investing $285 million over five years with a focus on prevention and mitigation, including reinforcing the FireSmart Canada program.

Fighting fire with fire

Counterintuitively, more fire could help prevent the most destructive blazes this summer.

"[Fire] is maybe the only natural disaster, where on one hand, it's extremely destructive, and on the other hand, is part of the solution," Daniels said, adding that Canada's forest management has focused primarily on maximizing economic benefit, which has increased the landscape's fire vulnerability.

"We've just left too much woody debris down on the ground, and that's fueling these new fires. And it's killing regenerating young forests that are 20 and 30 years old," she said.

A firefighter watches a prescribed burn proceed near Lytton in 2014. (B.C. Wildfire Management Branch)

Norton, said prescribed burns, forest thinning and Indigenous cultural burning practices are an important piece of fire mitigation that fire managers are deploying more often.

"Prescribed fire is not is not putting something artificial onto the landscape. It's using something that is in fact part of nature, in a controlled way to reduce risks," he said.

"Part of the challenge that we've had in this country over many decades of fire management is a disproportionate emphasis on only fire suppression activities," Norton said.

"All the provinces and territories are increasingly trying to shift focus towards a greater emphasis on preventing human-caused wildfires in the first place, and proactively mitigating risks from fires before they occur."
Collaboration and local expertise

Hanna says it is important to identify institutional barriers that are preventing controlled burns from being done sooner, such as multiple levels of decision making spread across different agencies.

He said that applies to Canada's model of firefighting as well, which has become "very centralized" and "elitist," run by provincial bodies that do not always work as closely as they could with locals.

"I think we have to rediscover the value of local people, their expertise and knowledge. Particularly in parts of rural communities in Canada, remote communities in Canada, where there's a lot of folks who know the land, know how to run machinery, who can work in a collaborative way with forest wildfire services to to be proactive, as well as reactive," he said.

The burned remains of the Scotch Creek & Lee Creek Fire Department and community hall are seen in Scotch Creek, B.C. in September. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)

Those people also have a vested interest in protecting their homes and communities, but getting them on board can sometimes be a last-minute scramble.

"How can you deploy those resources quickly without going through a two-day procurement process or form-filling process? That's very important," Hanna said.

Norton said the federal government has recognized this and is committing more than $800 million to invest and train additional firefighters with a particular focus on Indigenous people, and working to bolster firefighting equipment on reserves.

"Our training funding is targeting a fairly local level," he said.

Five charts to help understand Canada's record-breaking wildfire season
Building on last year's lessons

Daniels said Canada's wildfire response has been strong, as evidenced by a lack of civilian deaths last year despite the massive destruction of property. She worries, however, that our past successes may be "one of our barriers to future adaptation."

The dangers to human life are also becoming evident, with eight firefighters losing their lives fighting wildfires across Canada in 2023.

"The firefighter deaths rocked the wildfire community across the country," Norton said.

Wildfire fighter in B.C. dies on front lines of largest fire in province's history


25-year-old from Ontario identified as wildfire fighter killed in B.C.

Apart from the sheer number and size of fires in 2023, firefighters are dealing with increasingly severe fire behaviour like the proliferation of pyrocumulonimbus clouds, thunderstorms created and driven by the heat of extreme fires that can sometimes create new fires.

But among the challenges, Norton points to some major federal successes. He said Canada brought in more than 5,600 firefighters from 12 other countries to help fight fires in 2023 and signed new agreements to ensure support from other countries moving forward.

The Canadian Forest Service also delivered new wildfire intelligence tactical mapping products to provinces and territories, and in 2023 the U.S. Department of Defense deployed FireGuard, a new high-tech fire detection system, to help Canada battle wildfires using real-time data from drones and satellites to help detect new flareups in remote areas for the first time.

"We had, under incredible pressure, had some quite striking successes that we are working very hard to learn from to be able to reproduce as and when necessary in the future," Norton said.