The Guardian reports:

After days of acrid smoke from northern wildfires choking major US cities and inspiring Donald Trump to threaten Canada with tariffs, officials now say the reverse is also happening as parts of Canada issue air quality warnings caused by American fires to the south.

Officials in the Canadian province of British Columbia warned in an alert on Saturday evening that smoke from US fires, spurred on by thousands of lightning strikes in the north-east, was creating smoky conditions as polluted air drifted north.

“Much of this smoke is originating from fires south of the Canada-US border in Washington and Oregon,” the provincial wildfire service said.

Twenty-two large fires are burning across Washington and Oregon, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center, the fire coordination agency for both states. British Columbia has air quality warnings in place for two regions, Kootenay Lake and Cranbrook, located along the south-east border with the US.

Despite the US facing its own wildfire issues, Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans have chosen to accuse Canada of improper wildfire management and have threatened to hit Canadian officials with sanctions. [Continue reading…]

Quinn Glabicki reports:

When dense clouds of smoke from wildfires in Canada last smothered large parts of North America in 2023, the hazy skies were a shocking new phenomenon for many residents.

But climate change threatens to make it a recurring problem.

“What we’re seeing here is a dramatic increase in wildfires in North America,” said Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist and professor at the University of Michigan. As long as humans continue to burn fossil fuels, Dr. Overpeck said, global temperatures will increase, droughts will worsen, and there will be bigger, more frequent wildfires and smoke events.

The haze hanging over much of the United States today, Dr. Overpeck said, is “the harbinger of worse times to come.”

For years, burning forests in Indonesia have sent a thick haze across Southeast Asia that can ground flights in Kuala Lumpur and envelope Singapore in smog.

In 2022, researchers found that the number of people in the United States experiencing an “extreme smoke day” increased by 27 times over the previous decade. That trend shows no signs of stopping. [Continue reading…]