Climate change made Ontario, N.W.T. fire conditions roughly twice as likely: report

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris YoungThe conditions underlying intense July wildfires in Ontario and Northwest Territories were made roughly twice as likely due to human-induced climate change, said a new report published Thursday. The report by an international team of scientists says what were once rare fire conditions are now increasingly likely today due to climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels. In a world without human-caused climate change, the report suggests those conditions would have been much rarer, or less than once in 40 years. For both periods in Ontario, those conditions were made about twice as likely due to climate change, the report found. The same group behind Thursday's report published a similar analysis of Quebec's season that year, finding it was made seven times more likely due to climate change.