Human-caused climate change made the extreme fire conditions behind this year's Canadian wildfires twice as likely to happen, a study said Thursday.
Although the season began with below-normal activity, prolonged hot and dry weather since July has driven the rapid spread of fires across the country, with Ontario and the Northwest Territories especially impacted.
More than 3.8 million hectares (9.4 million acres) have burned so far this year, displacing thousands of people and exposing millions to dangerous smoke levels.
To assess the role of climate change, researchers at the World Weather Attribution group used observations and climate models to compare conditions to what the world would have looked like without climate change, warming the planet by 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.52 degrees Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times.
Focusing on the seven-day and the 30-day periods of most extreme "fire weather" in Ontario and the Northwest Territories, they found human-induced climate change made the events about twice as likely.
