REM: Emissions from Canada wildfires greater than from most industrialised countries

In 2023, fuelled by Canada's warmest and driest weather in decades, intense forest fires released around 640mn tonnes of carbon, according to NASA researchers. This amount is comparable to the annual emissions from fossil fuels of a large, industrialised nation.

In fact, only China, the US and India emitted more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fossil fuels than did the Canadian fires.

The researchers used satellite data and advanced modelling to measure the carbon emissions from these fires, which burned an area roughly the size of North Dakota between May and September 2023. The findings were published on August 28 in the journal Nature by a team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.

The analysis found that the fires in Canada released more carbon in a five-month period than either Russia or Japan did from burning fossil fuels throughout 2022 (480mn and 291mn tonnes respectively).