A study published in the Journal Nature found Canada’s 2023 wildfires released more carbon into the atmosphere than the annual emissions of all but three countries, underscoring a troubling trend. A new study raises serious concerns that Canada's forests, long considered crucial carbon sinks, may no longer reliably absorb carbon in the long term.
This signals a dangerous acceleration of global warming, pushing us over a tipping point. Permafrost, once thought to be a stable, frozen barrier, is now thawing and burning year-round, releasing even more carbon and methane into the atmosphere. The resulting domino effect exacerbates climate instability, leading to more extreme weather, rising sea levels, and declining air quality.
These human-driven changes are not just ecological crises — they pose direct threats to human health, increasing the likelihood of premature death due to heatwaves, pollution, and the cascading impacts of an increasingly volatile climate.
The Study: Carbon emissions from the 2023 Canadian wildfires
Abstract
The 2023 Canadian forest fires have been extreme in scale and intensity with more than seven times the average annual area burned compared to the previous four decades. Here, we quantify the carbon emissions from these fires from May to September 2023 on the basis of inverse modelling of satellite carbon monoxide observations. We find that the magnitude of the carbon emissions is 647 TgC (570-727 TgC), comparable to the annual fossil fuel emissions of large nations, with only India, China and the USA releasing more carbon per year. We find that widespread hot–dry weather was a principal driver of fire spread, with 2023 being the warmest and driest year since at least 1980. Although temperatures were extreme relative to the historical record, climate projections indicate that these temperatures are likely to be typical during the 2050s, even under a moderate climate mitigation scenario (shared socioeconomic pathway, SSP 2-4.5). Such conditions are likely to drive increased fire activity and suppress carbon uptake by Canadian forests, adding to concerns about the long-term durability of these forests as a carbon sink.
About Feedback Loops and Tipping Points
Tipping cascades have emerged between biogeophysical and social-ecological systems. This Domino Effect is causing climate change to accelerate at an exponential rate.
Tipping points are Critical Milestones that directly impact the rate of acceleration in climate change by multiplying the number and intensity of feedback loops. Identifying and understanding these tipping points is crucial for climate science and policymaking. Crossing multiple tipping points could lead to a domino effect, resulting in a much more rapid and severe climate change than currently projected.
Push a glass toward the edge of a table and eventually it will fall off on its own. No matter how slowly or meticulously you push… no matter how you weight or fill the glass, it will reach a tipping point and fall off before being pushed completely off the table. No matter whether you believe the glass is half-empty or half-full, when the tipping point is reached it will plummet out-of-control to its end. This is science not fate, faith, nor belief. Human induced climate change has resulted in environmental tipping points being breached.
Tipping points, when crossed, trigger self-sustaining feedback loops that are no longer dependent on human activity. Similar to when a domino topples over hitting two more dominoes that in turn fall hitting more dominoes. Thus, the name The Domino Effect. It can also be visualized as The Snowball Effect. A tipping point is like a snowball rolling down a hill growing in mass and velocity (momentum). When a tipping point is crossed, it results in cumulative and reinforced global warming.
* Our climate model employs chaos theory to comprehensively consider human impacts and projects a potential global average temperature increase of 9 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.