The carbon footprint of Canada's record wildfire season

Lost among the potential human and infrastructure impact (and the vague annoyance of the drifting smoke) of Canada's record-smashing wildfire season this year - a season which is by no means over, let's remember - is the immense carbon footprint of the fires.

With over 121,000 square kilometres of forest burned already in a total of of 4,774 fires, this forest fire season has been like no other. And now the Institute of Applied Ecology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (yes, it's Chinese, but I have reason to disbelieve it in this case) has estimated that the carbon dioxide emissions associated with the fires is in the region of 1 billion tons. Add in the other greenhouse gas emissions of methane and nitrous oxide, and the wildfires so far have been responsible for about 1.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. There may be an additional methane release element from fires that occurred in permafrost areas in the far north that is not included in these figures.

Now, a billion tons sounds like a big number, but what does it actually mean in context? According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions in 2021 amounted to 670 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent. A megaton is a million tons, so this year's wildfires have much more than doubled our annual carbon footprint, just like that. And remember, it's not finished yet.

UPDATE

If you don't trust those Chinese estimates (and I can understand that), Dr. Werner Kurz of Natural Resources Canada and the Canadian Forest Service, who also heads up the National Forest Carbon Accounting System for Canada (busy guy), estimates the carbon emissions from Canadian wildfires to the end of July at 1,420 megatonnes, taking into account both managed (about 60%) and unmanaged (about 40%) forests. This is substantially higher than the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and more than double the emissions from Canadian oil and gas, agriculture and electricity production combined. This, again, is as of July 18th, just halfway through the 2023 season.

I think I preferred the first one...