Canada wildfires release record 160 million tonnes of carbon

The EU's Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service on Tuesday said wildfires burning through large swathes of eastern and western Canada have released a record 160 million tonnes of carbon. 

As of June 26, the annual emissions from these wildfires are now the largest for Canada since satellite monitoring began in 2003. 

The wildfires have so far scorched British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Northwestern Territories in the west; Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia in the east. 

 “Our monitoring of the scale and persistence of the wildfire emissions across Canada since early May has shown how unusual it has been,” Copernicus senior scientist Mark Parrington said in a statement.

In June, the smoke blanketed several major urban centres including New York City and Toronto.

Drifting smoke from the ongoing wildfires across Canada is creating curtains of haze and raising air quality concerns throughout the Great Lakes region, and in parts of the central and eastern United States.

In Minnesota, a record 23rd air quality alert was issued on Tuesday through late Wednesday night across much of the state, as smoky skies obscure the skylines of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre reported Monday that 76,129 square kilometers (29,393 square miles) of land including forests has burned across Canada since January 1. That exceeds the previous record set in 1989 of 75,596 square kilometers (29,187 square miles), according to the National Forestry Database.

Currently in Canada, there are 490 fires burning, with 255 of them considered to be out of control.

Nearly a quarter of the fires burning in Canada are in Quebec.

In early June, U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement that hundreds of American firefighters and support personnel have been in Canada since May, and called attention to the fires as a reminder of the impacts of climate change.

(With inputs from agencies)