Ottawa: Canada is facing another devastating wildfire season, with blazes already forcing thousands to evacuate and thick smoke degrading air quality across vast areas of eastern North America.
Following an unprecedented 2023, the 2025 season is emerging as one of the most intense starts on record. Satellite data from NASA—updated twice daily—has identified an unusually high number of fire hot spots across the country, particularly in remote regions where ground sensors are lacking. According to Global Forest Watch, early June has seen four times the average number of hot spots, the highest since the satellite’s launch in 2012, apart from the record-breaking 2023 season.
However, these hot spots don’t directly translate into individual fires. Each detection, roughly the size of 26 football fields, may capture a portion of a larger blaze and can be flagged multiple times across several days.
Current reports from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre indicate that around 200 wildfires are active nationwide, having already scorched nearly 20,000 square kilometres—most of that in just the past week. Only the 2023 season reached such extreme levels so early, when a historic 170,000 square kilometres were ultimately consumed by fire, more than double the area of Lake Superior.
Together, the early satellite data and area burned suggest that 2025 is Canada’s second-worst start to wildfire season in over a decade.
The consequences are extending far beyond Canada’s borders. On Wednesday, thick smoke swept through the U.S. Midwest and Northeast, prompting air quality warnings in several states including New York, New Jersey, Iowa, and Maine. Cities such as Kansas City and Minneapolis reported air pollution levels deemed unhealthy by federal authorities.
The smoke’s reach has gone global. The EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) revealed that wildfire plumes from Manitoba and Saskatchewan traveled across the Atlantic twice in recent weeks—once reaching the Mediterranean as far as Greece in mid-May and again arriving in parts of northwestern Europe by June 1.
Although these high-altitude smoke plumes are unlikely to affect European air quality significantly, they have led to hazier skies and more vivid sunsets. CAMS senior scientist Mark Parrington noted the scale of the fires in central Canada is starkly reflected in the ability of their emissions to travel so far.
Central Canada, particularly the boreal forest regions, has seen a surge in wildfire activity in recent weeks. Liam Buchart, a fire weather specialist with the Canadian Forest Service, attributed the escalation to hot and dry conditions in late May and early June—a pattern increasingly linked to climate change.
While the vast majority of fires in Manitoba this year have been caused by human activity, scientists emphasize that global warming plays a crucial role in enabling fires to ignite and spread. “Climate change is creating the conditions that make it more likely that human-caused fires are going to spread, or even start,” said James MacCarthy, wildfire research manager at Global Forest Watch.
Looking ahead, forecasts from Natural Resources Canada predict continued hot and dry conditions across much of the country, especially in the Prairie provinces and southern British Columbia. With July and August also expected to be warmer and drier than usual, the remainder of Canada’s fire season is shaping up to be well above normal.
