WASHINGTON — Catastrophic Canadian warming-fueled wildfires last year pumped more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air than India did by burning fossil fuels, setting ablaze an area of forest larger than West Virginia, new research found. Scientists at the World Resources Institute and the University of Maryland calculated how devastating the impacts of the months-long fires in Canada in 2023 that sullied the air around large parts of the globe. They figured it put 2.98 billion metric tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air. The update is not peer-reviewed, but the original study was. …So when they burn all the carbon that’s stored within them gets released back into the atmosphere,” said author James MacCarthy, at WRI’s Global Forest Watch. When and if trees grow back much of that can be recovered, MacCarthy said. …It’s more than just adding to heat-trapping gases and losing forests, there were health consequences as well, Tyukavina said.