Is wildfire smoke an inevitable part of Vancouver summers now?

Grant Mattice/Flickr

Wildfires burning in and around BC have contributed to smoky skies and air advisories in Metro Vancouver over the past few summers.

Considering wildfire smoke can lead to choking in Metro Vancouver and rise to unsafe levels, we asked an expert if smoky skies will likely blanket the region every summer.

Brent Ward, who is the co-director of the Centre for Natural Hazard Studies at Simon Fraser University, said wildfire smoke blowing into Metro Vancouver “really depends on where the fires are and what the wind directions are so.”

While there was some worry about forest fires igniting in the spring due to how dry it was, Ward said the moisture levels have improved and are “quite high” now.

“I don’t know if we’ll get significant forest fires in the Lower Mainland area right away because of the moisture levels,” he said.

“So to make conditions favourable for significant wildfires, we need to dry out all that vegetation, decrease the amount of moisture in the soil, and sort of decrease the humidity, and that makes fires more likely to expand into significant blazes if we get some kind of a triggered event.”

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According to the Province’s site, about 60% of wildfires are caused by lightning strikes and ” rare chance of other natural causes,” and 40% are due to human activity.

“It’s probably drier and interior, but then the smoke has to switch around, and the winds have to be blowing it towards us,” Ward added.

Considering so many variables are at play, the expert said wildfire smoke blowing into the region is not inevitable.

“We’ve been very lucky it’s only been a few years where we’ve had really significant smoke here, whereas in the Okanagan, it’s been much, much worse.

As of Sunday, there are 96 active wildfires.

BC Wildfire Service

However, Ward stresses that we could see more heat-related deaths and cautions people to be aware of heat-related illnesses and how to stay cool.

“We’re seeing an increase in the magnitude and the frequency of these periods of higher heat and so my worry for the future is we have lots of people that are at risk for heat death, and we may see an increase in those occurring,” he said.

As people in Metro Vancouver face a hot summer ahead, Ward pointed out that areas with fewer trees and are more developed like downtown Vancouver will feel hotter.

“What we saw with the heat dome is areas with less trees heated up more,” she said.

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While temperatures this week are not forecast to be as intense as those in the 2021 heat dome, Ward did add that similar temperatures this summer are not impossible.

“The configuration isn’t right for a heat dome at this point, but we could easily get one again,” he said. “And… we’re seeing an increase in days above, you know, 25°C or 28°C and 30°C — there’s a definite trend in that. And so the chances of having above 40°C are increased because of anthropogenic climate change.”

Record-breaking temperatures were set in the province in 2021 and many people lost their lives.