Climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, also made the fires as much as 50 per cent more intense, according to the analysis by World Weather Attribution group, a global team of scientists that examines the role played by climate change in extreme weather.

“Climate change is greatly increasing the flammability of the fuel available for wildfires — this means that a single spark, regardless of its source, can rapidly turn into a blazing inferno,” said Yan Boulanger, a research scientist at Natural Resources Canada.

Rising global temperatures can yield more heatwaves, exacerbate drought and alter snow and rainfall patterns. This can dry out fuels, from grasses to trees, making them more likely to ignite and burn faster.

In many parts of Canada, snowfall acts as a limiting force for the start and spread of fires.

“This year, high temperatures led to the rapid thawing and disappearance of snow during May, particularly in eastern Quebec, resulting in unusually early wildfires,” said environmental scientist Philippe Gachon of the University of Quebec in Montreal.

Scientists reviewed weather data, including temperature, windspeed, humidity and precipitation, and used computer models to assess how climate change had altered fire weather this year, comparing it to preindustrial climate.

The Quebec fires are just one sliver of what has been the country’s worst wildfire season on record.

More than 14 million hectares so far have burned this year, amounting to roughly four per cent of Canada’s entire forest area, and more than six times the four-decade average of 2.3 million hectares, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.

Wildfires continue to threaten the province of British Columbia, which on Friday declared a state of emergency as the federal government said it would send in the military to help tackle out-of-control fires.

Last week, most residents evacuated the city of Yellowknife, N.W.T. as fires crept closer to the territory’s capital.

— Gloria Dickie is a Reuters climate and environment correspondent in London, England.

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A team of international researchers reported that some of the world’s most important freshwater sources — from the Caspian Sea between Europe and Asia to South America’s Lake Titicaca — lost water at a cumulative rate of around 22 gigatonnes per year for nearly three decades. That’s about 17 times the volume of Lake Mead, the United States’ largest reservoir.

Fangfang Yao, a surface hydrologist at the University of Virginia who led the study published in the journal Science, said 56 per cent of the decline in natural lakes was driven by climate warming and human consumption, with warming “the larger share of that.”

Climate scientists generally think that the world’s arid areas will become drier under climate change, and wet areas will get wetter, but the study found significant water loss even in humid regions. “This should not be overlooked,” Yao said.

Scientists assessed almost 2,000 large lakes using satellite measurements combined with climate and hydrological models.

They found that unsustainable human use, changes in rainfall and runoff, sedimentation, and rising temperatures have driven lake levels down globally, with 53 per cent of lakes showing a decline from 1992 to 2020.

Nearly two billion people who live in a drying lake basin are directly affected and many regions have faced shortages in recent years.

Scientists and campaigners have long said it is necessary to prevent global warming beyond 1.5 C to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. The world is currently warming at a rate of around 1.1 C.

Thursday’s study found unsustainable human use dried up lakes, such as the Aral Sea in Central Asia and the Dead Sea in the Middle East, while lakes in Afghanistan, Egypt and Mongolia were hit by rising temperatures, which can increase water loss to the atmosphere.

Lakes in Canada’s Arctic were part of the drying trend, the study found, “partially because of changes in temperature and PET (potential evapotranspiration), which is in line with broader climate changes toward increasing evaporative loss due to higher lake temperatures and reduced lake ice extents.”

Water levels rose in a quarter of the lakes, often as a result of dam construction in remote areas such as the Inner Tibetan Plateau.

Declines seen in naturally occurring lakes were in part offset, the study found, by “precipitation- and runoff-driven LWS (lake water storage) gains” in others such as the Great Lakes and Lake Winnipeg.

In all, the study said, between 1984 and 2015, satellites have observed a loss of 90,000 square km of permanent water area — an area equivalent to the surface of Lake Superior — whereas 184,000 square km of new water bodies, mainly reservoirs, were formed elsewhere.

Trends and drivers of global lake water storage have remained “poorly known,” the study added, which “impedes sustainable management of surface water resources, both now and in the future.””

— Gloria Dickie is a Reuters climate and environment correspondent in London. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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That does not mean the world would be crossing the long-term warming threshold of 1.5 C (2.7 F), which scientists have set as the ceiling for avoiding catastrophic climate change.

But a year of warming at 1.5 C could offer a taste of what crossing that long-term threshold would be like.

“We are getting measurably closer to temporarily reaching the lower target of the Paris Agreement,” said WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas, referring to climate accords adopted in 2015.

The likelihood of exceeding 1.5 C for a short period has been rising since 2015, with scientists in 2020 estimating a 20 per cent chance and revising that last year up to 40 per cent. Even one year at 1.5 C of warming can have dire impacts, such as killing many of the world’s coral reefs and shrinking arctic sea ice cover.

In terms of the long-term average, the average global temperature is now about 1.1 C warmer than the pre-industrial average.

“Loss and damage associated with, or exacerbated by, climate change is already occurring, some of it likely irreversible for the foreseeable future,” said Maxx Dilley, deputy director of climate at the WMO.

World leaders pledged under the 2015 Paris Agreement to prevent crossing the long-term 1.5 C threshold — measured as a multi-decadal average — but so far have fallen short on cutting climate-warming emissions. Today’s activities and current policies have the world on track to warm by about 3.2 C by the end of the century.

“It’s important to remember that once we hit 1.5 C, the lack of science-based emissions policies mean that we will suffer worsening impacts as we approach 1.6 C, 1.7 C, and every increment of warming thereafter,” said Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

— Gloria Dickie is a climate and environment correspondent for Reuters in London, England.

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“Half of humanity is already in the danger zone,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said earlier this week. And yet, “one-third of the world’s people, mainly in least developed countries and small island developing states, are still not covered by early warning systems.”

Today, there are about five times the number of weather-related disasters than there were in the 1970s. These droughts, floods, heatwaves and storms have killed more than two million people and wrought $3.64 trillion in losses worldwide since 1970, World Meteorological Organization data show (all figures US$).

With the trend expected to worsen as global temperatures continue to climb, “there is a need to invest $1.5 billion” in the next five years to predict when extreme events might occur, WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas said.

It was not immediately clear how much money the U.N. has allocated for the project, part of which was announced at last year’s U.N. climate summit in Glasgow.

Africa is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters, which also can impact food security. Parts of the continent are ravaged frequently by drought, cyclones or intense rainfall, but 60 per cent of the population lives in areas that are not covered by early-warning weather systems.

While natural disasters have become more frequent, warning systems have helped cut death tolls by some 76 per cent since the 1970s by giving people time to prepare for or flee oncoming danger, or by prompting governments to marshal aid.

Such systems can also help protect economies. A 24-hour storm warning, for example, can help people reduce damage by roughly 30 per cent, according to a 2019 report by the Global Commission on Adaptation. The same report suggested that spending $800 million on early-warning systems in developing countries alone would avoid up to $16 billion in annual losses.

Still, “we must not stop at just preventing deaths,” said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a Nairobi-based think tank. “If people survive a climate disaster but then are left to fend for themselves with their homes and livelihoods destroyed, it’s a meagre blessing.”

— Gloria Dickie is a global climate and environment correspondent for Reuters in London, England.

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