© BC Wildfire Service

As B.C. prepares for another potentially difficult wildfire season, the record-setting wildfire season of 2023 contributed to about 21 per cent of Canada’s carbon emissions from wildfires, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring System. CAMS’s Global Fire Assimilation System uses fire radiative power observations from satellite-based sensors to produce daily estimates of wildfire and biomass burning emissions. “CAMS estimated 102 megatonnes of carbon from wildfires in British Columbia for 2023,” Mark Parrington, CAMS senior scientist, said in a statement to Black Press Media. B.C’s contribution of 21 per cent to the Canadian total was similar to the emissions from the Alberta, which also experienced a difficult wildfire season, and only the Northwest Territories topped B.C., Parrington added. Putting the figure of 102 megatonnes into perspective, B.C.’s total greenhouse gas emissions in 2021 reached 62 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, according to data from the provincial government’s environmental reporting website.