Climate change made weather conditions that powered Quebec fires twice as likely, scientists say

The record-setting wildfires that ripped through Quebec this summer were made more likely and more intense by human-caused climate change, according to a newanalysis by an international team of scientists.

The World Weather Attribution initiative, a U.K.-based group that estimates the contribution of climate change to individual weather events, found thatour changing climate made the weather conditions that drove the wildfires two times more likely.

The analysis focused on Quebec, which experienced an exceptionally high number of wildfires in May and June after a dry, hot spring. The province has recorded a total of 5.2 million hectares burned this year.

Yan Boulanger, a research scientist at Natural Resources Canada and one of the study's authors, called the findings "shocking."

"We know that those extreme fire-prone weather conditions are occurring more frequently," he said in an interview.

"Nowwe are able to put the number or an estimate on to what extent those conditions that we have seen this year are caused actually by climate change and the numbers are very high."

Powerful fires likely to occur more often

Quebec was chosen for the analysis because of its particularly difficult season, the researchers said, though other Canadian provinces and territories have also had exceptional wildfire seasons. The researchers said they may also examine a broader region of the country in future.

Across Canada, an estimated15.3 million hectares have burned already this season more than twice the previous record of 7.6 million reported in 1989.

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The Quebec analysis has not yet been subject to scientific peer review, but it is based on peer-reviewed modelling. In the past, the research group has subjected its analyses to review and hasnot had to change itsfindings.

In this case, Boulanger and the other researchers used models to simulate how weather systems might behave without climate changeand compared those with what is happening today.

The analysis used the Fire Weather Index (FWI), a metric that combines temperature, wind speed, humidity and precipitation in order to estimate the risk of wildfire.

WATCH | How Quebec's destructive fire season is also breaking emissions records:

Climate change made Quebec wildfires twice as likely, scientists say

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New research focused on Quebec found that human-caused climate change made the weather conditions that cause wildfires twice as likely, more intense and will probably happen more frequently.

The researchers analyzed the seven-day maximum of the FWI over the study region which spans much of central and northern Quebec to assess the peak intensity of the fire weather. They concluded that the fire weather in Quebec was twice as likely to occur and around 20 per cent more intense because of climate change.

The researchers also noted that while the fire-prone weather conditions were unprecedented, they are expected to become less and less unusual.

In today's climate, similar weather conditions can be expected to occur once every 25 years, the researchers said, meaning that they have about a four per cent chance of occurring each year.

But if the planet continues to warm, the risk of even greater wildfires will further increase, Boulanger said.

"The odds of having more of these kinds of events are increasing into the future."

Rise of attribution science

The analysis was conducted by 16 researchers within the World Weather Attribution group, from universities and meteorological agencies in Canada, the Netherlands, the U.K. and the U.S.

Founded in 2015, the group studies extreme weather events, such as droughts, floods and heat waves to assess the role played by climate change. It is part of the growing field of attribution science, which attempts to make connections between individual weather events and climate change.

Such analyses can serve an important role in shapingpublic policy, said FriederikeOtto, a climate scientist at theImperial College of Londonwho was also involved in the Quebec analysis.

"There are often important lessons that can be used for the next time such an event occurs," she said.

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Scientists link factors behind wildfires to climate change

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Experts are linking extreme fire behaviour driven by drought and warming temperatures to climate change. They're more able to make these links due to a recent field called 'event attribution science'.

That's a sentiment echoed by Mohammad Reza Alizadeh, a climate data scientistat McGill University in Montreal who was not involved with the research.

We're entering a "new chapter" in our understanding of climate events, he said, also pointing to Australia's 2019-20 bushfire season, California's unprecedented 2021 wildfire season and the persistent heat waves that have swept through Europe for the past two summers.

"All these kinds of events, they are giving us a wake-up call," said Alizadeh. "To say we really need to maybe reconsider our definition of extreme events.

"We really need to adapt and update our adaptation plans, our definitions and also evenour studies and science."

Indigenous, remote communities bear impact

The wildfire impacts were disproportionately experienced by remote communities, especially Indigenous people, the researchers said.

"In early July, it was also calculated more than 75 per centof people in Canada under evacuation orders belonged to Indigenous communities," the study authors note.

Rhonda Oblin Cooper, deputy chief of the Cree community of Waswanipi in northern Quebec, described June as "really, really chaotic." Large parts of the community were evacuated twice at the beginning andend of the month.

"It was a very abnormal type of year," she said. "That's what everybody's commenting.The conditions were not usual the number of fires, the issues that we were dealing with, one after the other."

The sheer number of fires in the regionimpactedelectricity and water resources at times, she said, and hindered access to essentials such as groceries and gas.Then, there was the heavy smoke.

"Add all those other factors, and you start realizing, 'OK, we'resurrounded here,'" she recalled.

While the situation in the region has improved in recent weeks, Oblin Cooper says about 30 per cent of the community's traplines were lost to the fires, jeopardizing the ability to passon hunting knowledge to future generations.

"So, we're going to have to do some introspection to figure out,how do we share the resources that are left, how do we share the land that's left," she said.

"These are things that I think we're just starting to grasp, just how much we're getting impacted by these forest fires."