Climate Change and Wildfires in BC – a hot and smoky future?

Wildfires are a frequent occurrence in many regions of the world. These fires are the result of interactions between climate/weather, fuels (vegetation) and people. Our climate and associated day-to-day weather are changing rapidly due to human activities that may have dramatic and unexpected impacts on regional and global fire activity. A warmer world means a longer fire season, more lightning activity, and most importantly drier fuels. Drier fuels means it is easier for a fire to start, to spread and it means more fuel is available to burn that leads to higher intensity fires that are difficult to impossible to extinguish. Our fire regime is driven by extremes, and we expect an increase in frequency and intensity of extreme fire weather episodes. We have seen a sudden increase in fire activity in BC since 2017 – will this trend continue?

Watch a recording of the talk.

Speaker bio:

Mike Flannigan is the BC Innovation Research Chair for Predictive Services, Emergency Management and Fire Science at Thompson Rivers University and the Scientific Director of the Canadian Partnership for Wildland Fire Science. He received his BSc (Physics) from the University of Manitoba, his MS (Atmospheric Science) from Colorado State University and his PhD (Plant Sciences) from Cambridge University. Dr. Flannigan has been studying fire and weather/climate interactions including the potential impact of climatic change and lightning-ignited forest fires for over 40 years.