An exceptionally dry year in Canada fuels Minnesota's smoky summer
The smoky summer of 2025 has produced a near record number of air quality alerts for Minnesota. Most of this summer smoke has drifted in from these massive Canadian wildfires where more than 16 million acres of forest has burned in Canada this year.MPR News chief meteorologist Paul Huttner talked with Matthew Taraldsen, a meteorologist with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), about poor air quality and reason behind the state’s smoke-filled summers.The following has been lightly edited for clarity. Listen to the full conversation by clicking the player button above or subscribe to the Climate Cast podcast. First, some good news. The smoke has drifted away, and there’s the possibility of rain in some Canadian wildfire zones. Can that possibly limit our smoke over the next week or two? Yes, it definitely can. The areas that have been on fire have also been extremely dry, and so it likely isn’t enough to put out the fires, but it will definitely kind of dampen down the fire activity and limit the amount of smoke that the fires do emit. This has been quite a summer when it comes to air quality alerts. How close is the state to hitting record? We’ve had 19 alerts this year so far. Our current record is 53, so we’re not quite to record, but we’re above record pace. We’re higher than we were at 2023 at this point in the season. No matter how you cut it, it’s a very high-impact wildfire season. Most of our smoke this year is coming from Canada. That was also the case in 2023 when over 45 million acres burned in that country. What can we say about wildfire trends in the U.S. and Canada, and smoke in Minnesota, in the past few decades? The short answers is, it’s definitely on the rise. There’s been plenty of research out there in the western U.S. that the wildfire trends are growing as our climate warms. In Canada, the data until last year was a little bit more ambiguous. But there’s definitely a signal that what we’re seeing is likely being influenced with climate change.I think what what we’re seeing this year is likely still going to be an outlier. But I do think going forward, we’re likely to see at least some smoke impacts every year. We’ve also been having volatile, organic compounds inside the smoke that have also been serving as a pretty powerful base for ozone formation and seeing higher ozone days in ways we haven’t seen before. It’s kind of a one-two-punch. We hear a lot about climate change and wildfires versus forest management and fire suppression. How do you extinguish fire in 1.2 billion acres of boreal forest in remote areas with few roads?You don’t, is the short answer. In Minnesota, we think of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area as being remote, and it is to an extent. But Canada takes it to a whole new level.Canada has remote areas the size of the state of Texas and when you get a fire that starts there, there is no easy way to put that fire out, unless you air drop in firefighters who will then hand dig fire lines. This year, you have fires that are burning roughly the size of the state of South Carolina — think of how long it would take to hand carve fire lines around an entire U.S. state. On the other side, when those people are out, far away from civilization, if something were to happen more locally, they’re no longer on the field and you have to bring them back. So they’re letting them burn just because they don’t have the manpower to extinguish them all. It’s a multifaceted problem, but I think people lose sight of just how incredibly large this area is with no roads, no water lines, nothing out there. Your tools to control those fires are very limited. I know you’re in the air quality business and not in politics, but people are complaining about forest management, both the build up of fuels by suppressing fires and the let-it-burn approach. Now people are blaming Canada for not putting out fires. So what is it?The other point is that this is not just impacting the U.S. In Flin Flon, Manitoba, the air quality last month was over 500 for the entire month. So this is impacting people in Canada as much as it’s impacting people the United States, and no one’s happy with it. What’s your overall message to Minnesotans about our summer air quality and climate change going forward? I think the big thing to take away is to be vigilant. We’ve heard from a lot of people that checking the air quality has really become of part of their daily routine — just like you would check the normal weather forecast.That’s probably the most prudent thing. Check the air quality, have a plan to deal with smoke, wear a mask. It will protect you. Be prepared if you are outside in the smoke, and listen to your body.
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