Climate Crisis and the Canadian Territories

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Mon, 2022-10-24 04:05

jerrym

The Scotty Creek climate change research centre in the Northwest Territories, one of the first Indigenous-led research stations in the world that provided information on the climate crisis that was used around the world, has just burned down in a forest fire well outside the typical forest fire season, another sign of worsening climate crisis.

Damage caused by a wildfire at Scotty Creek Research Station, roughly 50 kilometres south of Fort Simpson, N.W.T. is shown in this undated handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO, Scotty Creek Research Station

The Łı́ı́dlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́ First Nation says the Northwest Territories' Scotty Creek research station has been "almost completely destroyed" by a forest fire. Located 50 kilometres south of Fort Simpson, Scotty Creek is one of the first Indigenous-led research stations in the world. It’s also one of the few long-term research stations in the North.

Organizations from around the world, including the IPCC, use data collected at the site to try to understand the progress of climate change in one of the most rapidly warming regions on Earth. The damage comes after a historic year in which Scotty Creek become a fully Indigenous-led research station, embracing a collaborative partnership with Wilfrid Laurier University. ... The First Nation, which has been collaborating with researchers since the 1990s, took over leadership of the station in August. ...

Scotty Creek has been in place since the 1990s. It also happens to be situated near the southern edge of permafrost, Scotty Creek director Bill Quinton told Cabin Radio last month, when the fire first threatened. (Quinton was not available for comment before publication of this latest report.)

Quinton said the station was put in at a time when a lot of environmental changes were noted due to climate warming. Over the past quarter of a century, researchers have collected an invaluable data archive, he said. ...

Data collected at Scotty Creek is shared globally. Researchers from at least six Canadian universities and institutions in the United States and Europe will be directly affected, The Łı́ı́dlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́ First Nation reported.

In a press release, the First Nation reported that five of Scotty Creek’s nine buildings, which include facilities used as laboratory space, sleeping accommodations and the storage of research equipment, burned to the ground. The rest of the buildings have been damaged to varying extents, the First Nation stated, and some will need to be replaced. Many storage containers that housed scientific equipment and tools were reportedly destroyed, as were support structures, platforms and solar arrays. ...

This year's wildfire season has been the most severe the territory has seen since the extremes of 2014, with the total area burned surpassing the 10-year average and nearly tripling the five-year average. A total of 257 fires have blazed across the territory this year, 30 of which are still active, burning a total of roughly 6,866 square kilometres.

https://www.pentictonherald.ca/spare_news/article_f969ef9a-9d07-5498-bd6...

Fri, 2024-03-08 15:19

jerrym

By August 2023 "Wildfires in the N.W.T had emitted 97 megatonnes of carbon into the air so far this year — 277 times more than what was caused by humans in the territory back in 2021. Mark Parrington, a senior scientist working at the European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), said the N.W.T. has contributed the most of all the provinces and territories to Canada's total wildfire emissions."

Drone aerial still photo of houses in Enterprise, N.W.T., on Aug. 24 that were burned by wildfire. (Tyson Koschik/CBC)

From the start of the year up until Aug. 23, wildfires across Canada have emitted 327 megatonnes of carbon into the air according to CAMS data. (For context, one megatonne is a million tonnes.)

More than a quarter of that has been generated by wildfires in the N.W.T., which began burning back in May and have displaced tens of thousands of residents across 10 communities this summer — including the capital city of Yellowknife. The fires have caused damage so far in Kátł'odeeche First Nation, Enterprise and Behchokǫ̀. Hay River and Kátł'odeeche First Nation have been displaced twice by wildfire in a matter of months.

Canada's North is warming faster than other parts of the planet, leading to more severe wildfires. It's also the reason why N.W.T., infrastructure is jeopardized by thawing permafrost, traditional ways of life are threatened as species come and go, and one N.W.T. community is at risk of washing away.

"We can all unequivocally agree this is climate change at the very root of this," said Jessica Davey-Quantick, a territorial wildfire information officer, during a press conference last week.

"We're going to see more active fire behaviour, more extreme weather, more drought-like conditions — all of those factors have kind of combined. But it's really hard to say that there's one culprit that led it to communities this year, when it didn't in previous years."...

Let's walk through the math: 97.09 megatonnes of carbon emitted as of Aug. 23 this year is equivalent to 356.32 megatonnes of carbon dioxide. You can convert the rate of carbon into carbon dioxide equivalent by multiplying the figure by 3.67. It's important to make that conversion because the territory reports its annual human-caused emissions in the form of carbon dioxide equivalent — which also take into account other greenhouse gases, like methane and nitrous oxide. In 2021, the territory emitted 1.287 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. Now, we can compare those two numbers equally. The carbon dioxide equivalent emitted by wildfires this year (356.32 megatonnes) is 277 times more than what was emitted by humans in 2021 (1.287 megatonnes).

The N.W.T.'s vast boreal forest usually sequesters more carbon than it emits — except during big fire years.

Up until now, 2014 has been considered the territory's worst wildfire year. According to CAMS data up until Aug. 23, the current wildfire season has not quite eclipsed 2014 in terms of emissions. (It has, however, if you compare it to Natural Resources Canada data which says fires that year emitted roughly 94.5 megatonnes of carbon.

According to N.W.T. Fire, 2.96 million hectares of land have burned in fires so far this year, but it's calculating an updated figure. The agency said the territory is well on its way to beating the record set back in 2014 of 3.4 million hectares burned.

Wildfires emit more than just carbon

CAMS monitors where wildfires are around the world and how intensely they're burning. It also tracks emissions and forecasts the effect smoke has on the atmosphere.

Parrington said they're able to do this using meteorology and satellite imagery. It's important to monitor wildfire emissions, he said, because of the effects it has on air quality and human health.

"Fires release far more pollutants into the atmosphere than the usual activities like road transport, energy production, industry," he said. "As well as the carbon gases, there's a lot of very harmful and hazardous constituents of smoke, including particulate matter, things like benzene, which a lot of people might associate only as an industrial pollutant."

When fires stop and the wind shifts, Parrington said air quality improves — but pollution from wildfires can persist for a long time if it settles on rivers and water bodies too.

The link between fires and climate change

World Weather Attribution, a U.K. based group that estimates the contribution of climate change to individual extreme weather events, recently released a study that found record-setting fires in Québec earlier this year were made twice as likely because of human-caused warming.

The group says it's exploring options to study wildfires in other parts of Canada, but Yan Boulanger, a forest ecology scientist with Natural Resources Canada and one of the Québec study's authors, said its findings can be extrapolated to Canada's North.

Given that climate change is having a bigger effect on British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Northwest Territories and Yukon, Boulanger said wildfires in those provinces and territories are probably made more than twice as likely by climate change. "These are very, very conservative estimates," he said. Still, Boulanger said he's shocked by the record number of people displaced across the N.W.T. and the evacuations that have taken place in Québec, B.C., Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Yukon.

He said Indigenous people are over-represented among evacuees, and they will continue to be over-represented in the future because their communities are typically in very fire-prone environments.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/nwt-fire-emissions-2023-1.6948761

Fri, 2024-03-08 15:25

jerrym

In view of the disastrous wildfire season created by the climate crisis that the Northwest Territories had in 2023 when two thirds of the population had to leave the territory, the government is making greater preparations for 2024 and urging residents to do the same.

An aerial view of the wildfire threatening the Yellowknife area from Aug. 17, 2023. The intensity of the fire dampened over the weekend thanks to rain, lighter winds and cooler conditions. (N.W.T. Fire)

The N.W.T.'s Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs (MACA) is urging residents to prepare emergency kits, emergency plans and to get insurance ahead of the 2024 fire and flood season.

MACA is one of two government departments participating in a review of its response to the 2023 wildfire season, along with the Department of Environment and Climate Change (ECC). MACA Minister Vince McKay said in the legislature Wednesday that his department is already implementing lessons from the summer's fire season. He said the people of the Northwest Territories should do the same. "Individuals and families should have household emergency plans, emergency kits and emergency contact information available, property owners and businesses should have insurance and plans to protect their property during emergencies, residents should be familiar with their community emergency plans," McKay said.

He said climate change means the territory can expect more frequent and more severe wildfires and floods, and that while they can't make exact predictions about wildfire and breakup seasons, they can take steps to prepare. "I urge all residents to consider this as a 2024 high-risk season approaches," McKay said. ...

n the legislature Tuesday, Kieron Testart, MLA for Range Lake, gave notice that he and Dehcho MLA Sheryl Yakeleya will be calling for a public inquiry into the wildfire crisis. The public inquiry would establish an independent board of four people to investigate the territorial government's response to the 2023 wildfire season.

Calls for a review, along with an independent inquiry, of the government's response to the wildfires have been numerous since the many evacuations last summer and fall and the loss of homes, cabins and most of the community of Enterprise to fire. More than 4 million hectares of land burned across the territory.

Jay Macdonald, minister of ECC, said his department, too, is anticipating a difficult fire season and ECC is bringing in extra fire crews and aircraft to prepare. He also said his department is meeting with N.W.T. community leaders to discuss planning for the spring and summer. Macdonald said the review for his department — which is being conducted by a third-party contractor — began in November and is expected to be completed by the end of March. He said the report with its findings would be released in the spring.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/nwt-urges-emergency-preparedness-20....