Firefighters in Canada: ‘Gigantic blazes will burn all summer’ | Hacker News Reader

Firefighters in Canada: ‘Gigantic blazes will burn all summer’

english.elpais.com

26 pointsgeox11 comments

Quebec's forest fire protection agency (SOPFEU - Société de protection des forêts contre le feu) website[1] currently reports:

> 1461435.3 HECTARES AFFECTÉS

> 9860.1 MOYENNE 10 ANS

If I'm reading this right, Quebec's forest fire area burned year-to-date is 150 times higher than the ten-year trailing average, which is absurdly high.

No wonder this is choking multiple continents. I can't think of any geo-aggregated quantity that wouldn't massively disrupt human activity when multiplied by this factor. Imagine a 150x increase or decrease in: precipitation, forested area, agricultural production, human population, population of any animal, Kelvin temperature (ouch), sunlight (quick, flee to Europa), ...

[1] https://sopfeu.qc.ca/

> If I'm reading this right, Quebec's forest fire area burned year-to-date is 150 times higher than the ten-year trailing average, which is absurdly high

Earlier this year (late May) the stat for Alberta was that already they had seen 100x more hectares burned than in all of last year.

It's a mess for all of North America and I have to wonder if this is only the start of the trend and each year will be worse

* https://data.usatoday.com/fires/

* https://map.purpleair.com/

This year seems to be an extreme outlier but I wouldn't bet that this won't look pretty normal 10 years from now.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/wildfires-outlook-forecast-...

That’s with 1.1C global temperature increase. Current trends point to >2C by the end of the century.

It'll be a wild ride for lots of us, that's for sure. It's gonna be interesting to see how we're gonna deal with all of this as a species. The frequency and amplitude of events will be like we've never seen before.

I'm sure we all know how this species handles with problems: wars. International wars, civil wars, class wars, street wars, all that and a few more, not invented yet. In war times some are known to increase their wealth and it happens they are also those having currently the power to do something against war. Will they do something against increasing their wealth?

Argh! I thought it would just last a few weeks. Here in Ottawa, Canada, we have a consistent haze most days. It only lets up when it rains and shortly thereafter.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a great time for me to take up the hobby of astrophotography (https://www.astrobin.com/users/bhouston/). Summer is a great time with lots of amazing targets in the sky but this haze is killing most of the opportunities.

On the bright side, these fires are not burning down communities, it seems they are most just burning through forests.

Wouldn’t winters be better for the clearer, dryer air? Or are winters in Ottawa generally cloudy?

Winters in Ottawa are -20C at night, or colder if the night is clear. Setting up a telescope in that weather is not fun. If I was to invest in an astronomy building, where I could just roll off the roof, that would probably be acceptable. But I haven't gone that far yet.

Yeah, unfortunately, it looks like this summer is going to be a bad one for wildfires in Canada. My family lived in British Columbia for a few years, and they had to evacuate their home once due to a wildfire. It was terrifying, and they saw the devastation that fires can cause firsthand. My heart goes out to all those affected by these fires.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com