The Fort McMurray Fire: 'Absolutely a Harbinger of Things to Come' [View all]

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/11/fort-mcmurray-fire-absolutely-harbinger-things-come

The devastating wildfire in Fort McMurray, Canada appears to be losing its intensity, as weather conditions improve for firefighters and initial assessments of staggering damage trickle in.

Meanwhile, awareness of the massive fire's significance in the context of climate change continues to spread.

"Alberta's unusually early and large fire is just the latest of many gargantuan fires on an Earth that's grown hotter with more extreme weather," the Associated Press wrote on Wednesday.

Indeed, the New York Times reported last month:

Fires, once largely confined to a single season, have become a continual threat in some places, burning earlier and later in the year, in the United States and abroad. They have ignited in the West during the winter and well into the fall, have arrived earlier than ever in Canada and have burned without interruption in Australia for almost 12 months.

The Times reported further on Wednesday, citing boreal forest fires "throughout the hemisphere":

Global warming is suspected as a prime culprit in the rise of these fires. The warming is hitting northern regions especially hard: Temperatures are climbing faster there than for the Earth as a whole, snow cover is melting prematurely, and forests are drying out earlier than in the past. The excess heat may even be causing an increase in lightning, which often sets off the most devastating wildfires.