This Wednesday, social networks were filled with thousands of stunning photographs of New York in a hue rarely seen before. The sepia color of the Big Apple sky looked like something out of a science fiction movie.
What Happened in the New York Sky?
What happened in New York is a consequence of the smoke that ‘drowns’ millions of people in several locations in the United States and Canada; the above, after 441 forest fires that are currently active in Canadian territory, a figure much higher than normal due to the worst effects of climate change.
Since January, flames have burned 3.8 million hectares of forest and vegetation in Canada when the average figure over the last decade had been 250 000 hectares. “Climate change is playing a role. This spring has been very dry in eastern Canada,” explained Kent Moore, a physics professor at the University of Toronto, who specializes in the study of meteorology and the climate crisis.
The Wildfire Crisis in Canada
Moore also points out the specific case of Nova Scotia, which in recent days has experienced two unprecedented wildfires, the effects of Hurricane Fiona, which in September 2022 devastated that Atlantic Canadian province.
Fiona’s winds felled thousands of trees. “Those trees are now dead, rotting, and are basically more fuel for the flames,” the Canadian professor explained. Of course, scientists have linked the increased intensity and number of hurricanes in the Atlantic to global warming.
An Early Spring
Although the fires in Quebec and Ontario are the ones in the media, because their smoke is covering cities like New York, the reality is that, in Western Canada, the flames are even more intense. Moore points again to the effects of the climate crisis. “In the fires in British Columbia and northern Alberta, climate change is also playing a key role because it’s bringing spring forward.”
That means the heat waves that the region periodically experiences are also coming earlier and with them the wildfires. It should be remembered that an extreme heat wave in late June and early July 2021, with temperatures reaching 49.6 degrees Celsius in the interior of British Columbia, caused the deaths of at least 619 people and wildfires that completely destroyed several communities.
For this summer, forecasts are worrisome because spring is not being, as usual, a wet season, and the summer months are especially dry in Canada. Moore also warned that this year it was Canada’s turn but that in the Russian roulette that weather has become, next year it may be other regions in the upper northern hemisphere that are affected. “Two years ago, it was Siberia where there were severe wildfires.”
The Problem Could Go to the Arctic
Moore is also concerned about the health effects of fire smoke because the particles that wind blows into North American cities are especially microscopic and settle deep into the lungs. However, even if the winds, which now blow south towards the most populated areas of North America, were to change their direction to the arctic regions, the problems would not disappear.
In that case, the particles would end up deposited in the Arctic, obscuring the ice and removing some of the region’s ability to reflect solar radiation, which in turn would contribute to accelerated global warming.
“What concerns me most is that we’re seeing the effects of the average global temperature increase of 1.1 degrees. And we are having trouble responding to its impact when the predictions are that we will reach 1.5 degrees in the next few years,” Moore concluded.
Story written in Spanish by Miguel Fernández in Cultura Colectiva News
