More than 500 wildfires were still burning in B.C. in September, with the Yukon, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, and parts of the Atlantic provinces all experiencing one of the worst fire seasons in history. Globally, wildfires in the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Sweden and Australia are burning at an alarming rate.

According to John Pomeroy, Canada Research Chair in Water Resources and Climate Change and director of the University of Saskatchewan-led Global Water Futures Program (GWF), this is a horrific year for wildfires not only in Canada, but around the world.

"You do not expect extensive wildfire in Swedish mountain tundra or in Welsh mountains, but we see that this year," said Pomeroy. "This is further evidence of remarkably fast changes in climate around the world as a result of new extremes of heat and variable precipitation, due to human-introduced greenhouse gasses."

Pomeroy points to a number of factors that have led to these severe fires this year, including an extremely dry and hot summer, and dead forests ravaged by the invasive pine beetle—a creature that continues to thrive in warmer winters, especially in the B.C. interior.

These fires are also sprinkling ash across the Columbia Icefield and glaciers that make up the headwaters of the Saskatchewan, Mackenzie, and Columbia River Basins. This ash will likely speed up the melt due to the increase of solar radiation on the glacier, whereas clean ice would reflect the sun's rays.

"This is the darkest I've seen the Athabasca Glacier in my life," said Pomeroy, who has been studying hydrology in the Rockies since the early 1980s.

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