The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: Canada’s Forests Are Likely Burning More Than They Can Grow Back
Dear Diary. Climate change is rapidly coming to Canada like an unstoppable freight train. That nation was shocked in 2021 due to an extreme western North America that sent temperatures as high as 120°F in southern British Columbia. In 2023 many were amazed at how much Canadian acreage burned with associated smoke choking the northern U.S. Earlier this warm season we saw similar fiery and smokey effects.
One question that comes to mind is whether or not Canada’s vast forests can recover. Obviously, if much of the country experiences wetter and cooler conditions over the next few decades, forests will grow back. But that is not what will happen because of the burning of fossil fuels. Instead expect more fires and smoke from those fires going into the mid 21st century.
Here is a new Washington Post article with Canadian forest trend details:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025/07/11/canada-wildfire-smoke-forests-landscape-change
Canada’s forests may be burning faster than they can grow back
The hundreds of wildfires burning in Canada may forever transform the country’s landscape — but some fire experts say that might not be a bad thing.
July 11, 2025
Trees burned by wildfires in northern Manitoba are visible during a helicopter tour in the surrounding area of Flin Flon on Thursday. (Mike Deal/Canadian Press/AP)
By Ruby Mellen
Hundreds of wildfires are burning in Canada — and they could change the way the country looks.
Scientists say the blazes could transform parts of the Canadian landscape, as more intense and more frequent fires push forests to adapt and prevent certain common Canadian trees from regrowing.
More than 200 fires burned across Canada as of Saturday, their smoke sweeping across oceans and continents. More than 80 of them are burning “out of control,” according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. Fire is part of the Canadian landscape. Millions of acres can burn each year, and the country’s native plants are hardwired to endure the effects of wildfire — to an extent.
But — as is the case with most wildfire-prone areas — drier conditions and warmer weather due to climate change are making these fires more frequent and hotter.
“You’ve got too many fires in close succession,” said Marc-André Parisien, a wildfire research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service. “The trees just kind of can’t keep up.”
It depends on what kind of tree is facing fire. The white spruce, an evergreen that can grow more than 180 feet tall, doesn’t fare as well in fire-filled environments, said Ellen Whitman, also a fire research scientist with the Forest Service. Other trees, such as the jack pine and the lodgepole pine, are more resilient to fire, she said, but young trees are often the weakest after a blaze.
“If you burn that young stand before it has cones, or before it has enough cones, the regeneration will be very poor,” Whitman said.
Fire and smoke from the Dryden Creek wildfire north of Squamish, British Columbia, on Tuesday. (Tijana Martin/Canadian Press/AP)
In 2023, record-breaking fires tore through the country, burning more than 45 million acres in all 13 provinces and territories. The following year brought more conflagrations, including a blaze in Alberta that burned more than 80,000 acres of Jasper National Park, famous for its alpine lakes and thick forests. Months later the trees were still charred, but new greenery had begun to grow, Landon Shepherd of Parks Canada told CTV last year.
“[It] is going to become beautiful in its own way,” Shepherd said.
What could happen is a shift to grassland or savanna in some parts of the country, instead of the tall forests Canada is known for. This would in some ways be a return to the past, said Parisien — and not necessarily a bad thing.
“Some of these areas weren’t nearly as forested in the past,” he said. “And that was partially because people burned a lot of the land.”
A 2020 study Parisien co-wrote in Nature found that decades of fire suppression to protect lives and homes in parts of Canada had increased wildfire risk and the potential severity of blazes.
For centuries, people allowed forests to burn, making fires less intense because they happened more frequently. For example, Parisien said, Indigenous people used to start controlled fires in the area now known as Wood Buffalo National Park in the early spring, when the snow made burning less risky. This created patches of land that were kept open, encouraging bison to graze and berries to grow. Now the place is more of a thick, coniferous forest that could burn at high intensity.
“I used to think, ‘Oh, my God, the trees are gone, it’s so bad,’” Parisien said. “But I’ve changed my mind. Maybe in a lot of cases it’s not so bad.”
In the early 20th century, as people began to settle and build deeper in the forests, fires were more often suppressed.
“You have to protect the people by putting out the fires,” Parisien said. “But putting out the fires today may leave issues tomorrow.”
Still, researchers acknowledge we can’t just go back to how things were.
“We’re moving to a place that has no historical analogue,” said Mike Flannigan, the science director of the Canadian Partnership for Wildland Fire Science at the University of Alberta. “We’re in new territory, uncharted territory,” as climate change has exacerbated wildfires’ pace and scale.
The fires are burning as Canada will host a Group of Seven summit on Monday in Calgary, Alberta. It will not feature a specific session on climate change. The topic irritated President Donald Trump at the first G-7 meeting he attended in Italy. A senior Canadian government official said that the subject would be integrated into other sessions on wildfires and building the critical mineral supply chains needed for the energy transition.
Firefighters survey the scene as a wildfire burns near a house in Squamish, British Columbia, on Monday. (Jesse Winter/Reuters)
Those most affected by the blazes in Canada feel they have the least input in managing and preventing them.
Although Indigenous people represent only about 5 percent of Canada’s population, 42 percent of wildfire evacuations between 1980 and 2021 occurred in Indigenous communities, according to an article published last year in the International Journal of Wildland Fire.
“Even though Indigenous people are the most impacted, we have very little power to change the situation,” said Amy Cardinal Christianson, a senior fire analyst for the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, who led the report.
She expressed frustration over permits needed to do intentional burning and said Indigenous communities aren’t involved enough in budget decisions or decisions on fire suppression. She said that some fire managers have tended to dismiss their knowledge of the land as outdated. But they stand to lose the most from these catastrophic burns.
“For us as Indigenous people, if we don’t have culture, we don’t have anything,” Christianson said. “And our culture is connected to the land.”
Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Amanda Coletta, David J. Lynch and Annabelle Timsit contributed to this report.
Extreme weather:
- At least four killed in West Virginia after devastating flash floodingJune 15, 2025
- At least 4 dead as heavy rain, flash flooding hit TexasJune 12, 2025
- As disasters loom, emergency managers say they aren’t counting on FEMAJune 8, 2025
- Strong tornadoes batter Texas as severe weather spreads east June 6, 2025
- Maps show how far smoke from Canadian wildfires has spreadJune 6, 2025
- Why tornado ratings don’t always tell the whole storyMay 22, 2025
By Ruby Mellen Ruby Mellen reports on climate change and the environment for the Washington Post. follow on Xrubymellen
Here are more “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate News from Monday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)