Carbon emissions from 2023 wildfires in Canada shatter records

Aug. 3 (UPI) -- This year's emissions from wildfires in Canada already are double their highest previously recorded level, according to the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts' Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.

The observations from CAMS surpass any previously recoded year in the history of the Global Fire Assimilation System v 1.2, which has been operating since 2003.

The system has detected 290 megatons of carbon emissions from Canada this year so far, which already is more than twice the previous record of 138 megatons that was recorded in 2014.

According to the European Commission, the GFAS "assimilates fire radiative power (FRP) observations from satellite-based sensors to produce daily estimates of wildfire and biomass burning emissions. It also provides information about injection heights derived from fire observations and meteorological information from the operation weather forecasts ECMWF."

The system, which is managed by the European Commission in partnership with the European Space Agency, also has been used to monitor wildfires in Greece, Algeria and Italy.

"We have been monitoring the emissions from wildfires right across Canada for three months since the beginning of May, during which time they have continued to increase almost continuously to a level which is already considerably higher than the previous annual total fire emissions for Canada in our dataset," said CAMS senior scientist Mark Parrington.

"As fire emission from boreal regions typically peak at the end of Jully and early August, the total is still likely to continue rising for some more weeks and we will continue to monitor," Parrington said.

Data from CAMS is updated frequently and is publicly available online.