Canada’s boreal forest has historically served as a carbon sink. Trees draw carbon from the atmosphere into their leaves, trunks and down into their roots and soil. But the warming climate and drier conditions in the past two decades have led to larger wildfires, turning the boreal forest into a growing source of carbon. “The impacts of these emissions on the atmosphere are, of course, huge,” said Werner Kurz, a senior scientist with Natural Resources Canada’s Forest Service. “The effectiveness of our greenhouse gas emission reduction targets is going up in smoke, literally.” The amount of greenhouse gases burned in this year’s wildfires is estimated to be more than two and a half times that of all sectors in the Canadian economy combined, said Kurz, citing federal government data. …Kurz has been sounding the alarm for decades about the future of Canada’s forests, and says the emissions from wildfires can no longer be ignored.