Starting in March 2023, Canada burned for eight months, with flames licking all 13 provinces and territories in the country’s deadliest ever fire season. At least 150,000 people evacuated, and tens of millions across North America were affected by the drifting smoke. In New York, residents experienced the worst air quality in half a century.
Five months later, Greece was besieged by the European Union’s largest blaze yet, which claimed almost 350 square miles of forests and took the lives of 19 immigrants. Near the equator, the Amazon experienced a record-breaking number of fires. For months, satellite images showed thick plumes of smoke shrouding entire countries and swaths of charred land, their perimeter accented by flares of highlighter-orange flames.We can thank climate change for these unprecedented conflagrations. On Tuesday, an international group of scientists released State of Wildfires, an annual report that analyzed global wildfires between March 2023 and February 2024, concluding beyond doubt that climate change intensified the conditions that fueled the flames. According to the r... Read more
