Climate change doubled risk during 2017 B.C. wildfire season: research

VICTORIA (NEWS 1130) – The risk during B.C.’s record setting wildfire season of 2017 was doubled due to human-caused climate change, according to new federal research.

The estimate is that the amount of land scorched was as much as 11 times more than it would have been without human influence on climate.

“We’re seeing very high temperatures,” Megan Kirchmeier-Young, a research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada explains. “They’re much more likely than they would have been without the human influence. And that directly plays a role in determining wildfire risk.”

The research used climate simulations to compare two different scenarios — one where realistic human influence affected the climate, while the other featured “minimal human influence.”

“We take a climate modeling approach, and our model takes into account realistic human influence on the climate — so that is things like greenhouse gas emissions and then other factors like aerosols and ozones and even land-use change. And we can compare the types of temperatures or wildfire risk we see in our simulations that take this into account, and compare those to a different period of our simulations where the effect from humans is minimal,” Kirchmeier-Young adds.

She says increased wildfire risk is just one example that the climate is changing because of human influence. Researchers say the information gathered can be used to help people understand where we are headed in the future, and possibly help focus any future “adaptation plans.”

The B.C. wildfire season of 2017 broke records for the amount of land scorched province-wide, and displaced more than 65,000 people between July and September.

The record — which was set at 1.2 million hectares — was then broken in 2018.

A state of emergency was called on July 7th, 2017, and was lifted on September 15th, 2017, making it the longest state of emergency in the province’s history.

Results point to need for action: Weaver

What is evident from the information gathered by researchers, B.C. Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver says, is that there is a growing need for action to curb the impacts humans have on the climate.

“We can deal with it, but dealing with it does not mean building pipelines, refineries, and fossil fuels,” Weaver, who was part of a Nobel Prize-winning team for his work on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tells NEWS 1130.

“It’s about embracing the transformation of our energy systems from those that pollute to those that don’t,” he says.

Weaver stresses the government needs to take a stand, and says there seems to be an almost “deer in headlights” approach nationwide when it comes to dealing with global warming and climate change.

“What surprises me is actually the lack of government will and public appetite for actually preparing for the future because the change is going to be profound.”

He believes governments need to reduce emission, but also take steps to ensure we are ready for what’s coming.

“In the present case in B.C., we’ve known to expect this for quite some time,” he adds. “What we should be doing is actually revising forest policy in British Columbia to allow, for example, natural fires to exist in the fall season to ensure that logging practices are appropriate. To ensure that we actually let undergrowth come up.”