Record heat meets record wildfires in Canada, and scientists say this is the new reality
An aerial view of wildfire of Tatkin Lake in British Columbia, Canada on July 10, 2023.
BC Wildfire Service | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Record high temperatures and a record fire season are hitting Canada at the same time this summer, leading to an unprecedented combination of heat, fire and dangerous smoke plumes.
“I can’t emphasize enough just how terrifying this moment is on our planet. With global temperature records breaking and fires and floods raging around the world, our house is truly on fire,” Kristina Dahl, principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told CNBC.
Climate change, caused by greenhouse gas emissions, is making the planet hotter and also increasing the potency of the ingredients that are necessary for wildfires to burn. Even if humans stopped burning all fossil fuels today, the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere is going to continue heating the planet for decades to come.
“If I had a magic wand and said, ‘no more greenhouse gases being produced from human activities as of now,’ we will continue to warm for 30 to 50 years,” explained Michael Flannigan, the research chair for predictive services, emergency management and fire science at Thompson Rivers University British Columbia.
That means what’s happening now is unprecedented, but it’s also a harbinger of what’s coming.
“This is the new reality, not the new normal, because we’re on a downward spiral,” Flannigan told CNBC.
Record-breaking wildfires with no end in sight
On June 27, Canada surpassed the record set in 1989 for total area burned in one season when it reached 7.6 million hectares, or 18.8 million acres, a communications officer for Natural Resources Canada, told CNBC.
The total has since increased to 9.3 million hectares, or 23 million acres, which is about the size of South Carolina. The average is around 2.2 million hectares, or 5.4 million acres, or about the size of Massachusetts.
“The current wildfire season in Canada has been astounding and record breaking,” Dahl told CNBC.
Soon, the total amount of land burned this year will hit the equivalent of Maine, Flannigan said.
“We’re used to getting fires in the West, or the East, or in the north, or the central — but not the whole country at the same time,” Flannigan told CNBC.
An aerial view of wildfire of Tatkin Lake in British Columbia, Canada on July 10, 2023.
BC Wildfire Service | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
And the fire season is not even close to over. There are currently 908 active fires burning in Canada, and 576 of those are classified as “out of control,” according to data in a real time dashboard operate by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre as of 2:15pm EST on Thursday.
“I’m not sure where we’re going to end up with this because it keeps keeps on burning,” Flannigan told CNBC. “Some of these fires are huge. And they will burn all summer, all fall, and some of them will burn through winter. Underground they smolder and even though you can have snow on top, they keep burning underground. And then spring, the snow melts, stuff gets hot, dry and windy. They pop to the surface and start spreading again.”
Record heat turns vegetation into kindling
Earlier in July, the Earth recorded its hottest average day since records began — then repeated the feat three times in four days.
Temperatures in Canada are no exception. Earlier this year, Fort Good Hope, at about 66 degrees north latitude in the Northwest Territories, reached 37.4 degrees Celsius — more than 99 degrees Fahrenheit — setting a record for the warmest Canadian temperature at that latitude, according to the Canadian government. Subsequent readings in nearby communities were even hotter, according to news reports.
“We’re in uncharted waters here,” Dahl told CNBC.
“Since May we’ve seen a pattern of heat domes developing in parts of North America,” Dahl told CNBC. A heat dome is a weather event that occurs when the atmosphere traps hot air like a lid or a cap, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration describes it. “These zones of extreme heat tend to persist for long stretches of time — weeks in some cases. The heat dome that developed in May was linked to the development and spread of the fires in Alberta that kicked off the start of Canada’s record-breaking fire season.”
“I’ve never seen it start so early that far north,” Flannigan told CNBC. Before he started working in academia, Flannigan worked for the Canadian Forest Service for 30-plus years.
Hotter weather dries out vegetation, which serves as fuel for the wildfires.
“The warmer it gets, the atmosphere gets more efficient at sucking the moisture out of the fuels,” Flannigan told CNBC. “It’s not a linear increase, it’s almost exponential.”
Also, warmer temperatures lead to more lightning, Flannigan said. In Canada, about half of wildfires are started by lightning, but they are responsible for 80% to 90% of the land burned, since these areas tend to be remote and harder for firefighters to reach.
A future of more fire and smoke
Three key ingredients for a wildfire spread are fuel, ignition and weather, Sarah Burch, a climate change professor at the University of Waterloo and the executive director of the Waterloo Climate Institute, told CNBC.
“While wildfire is a natural feature of healthy ecosystems, climate change affects all three of the factors” that cause wildfires, Burch told CNBC. So, too, does land management. For example, the mountain pine beetle is killing trees and turning them into fuel for wildfires, Burch told CNBC. And long-duration droughts also make forests more flammable.
“This means that we expect fires to increase in frequency and intensity in the future,” Burch told CNBC.
People will have to learn to live alongside those wildfires.
Smoke from wildfires in Canada shrouds the Empire State Building on June 30, 2023 in New York City.
David Dee Delgado | Getty Images
“This is a common misconception of people that fire management can stop all fires all the time. Obviously, that’s not true,” Flannigan said.
If firefighters arrive when a fire is still small, they can put it out. But sometimes a fire can balloon into a high-intensity blaze in as little as 15 minutes. When a wildfire becomes a “crown fire,” meaning it jumps from tree top to tree top, “the horse has left the barn,” Flannigan told CNBC. “It’s too late. You’ve missed your window.”
Some fire mitigation techniques can work to slow the back end of a fire that’s already burning at full intensity, but when “that head is just racing across the landscape, you just have to get out of the way.”
This means more smoke from these wildfires traveling to other parts of the globe, too. Earlier in July, wildfire smoke from Canada blanketed much of the United States mid-west and Eastern seaboard.
There is no silver bullet to solving this problem, Flannigan says. Drones and artificial intelligence can help scientists track and monitor fire movement, but they are tools, not solutions. The only long-term solution is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on a global scale to mitigate the effects of climate change.
“I think there’s still time if we get our act together as a global society to deal with this. And sometimes people need a bloody nose or two before we change our behavior. We can change. And I’m hoping that we’re getting the bloody noses and now we’ll actually do something about fossil fuels,” Flannigan said.
A logo hangs on the building of the Beijing branch of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) on December 4, 2020 in Beijing, China.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
Shares of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, China’s largest contract chip maker, fell nearly 7% Friday after its first-quarter earnings missed estimates.
After trading on Thursday, the company reported a first-quarter revenue of $2.24 billion, up about 28% from a year earlier. Meanwhile, profit attributable to shareholders surged 162% year on year to $188 million.
However, both figures missed LSEG mean estimates of $2.34 billion in revenue and $225.1 million in net income, as well as the company’s own forecasts.
During an earnings call Friday, an SMIC representative said the earnings missed original guidance due to “production fluctuations” which sent blended average selling prices falling. This impact is expected to extend into the second quarter, they added.
For the current quarter, the chipmaker forecasted revenue to fall 4% to 6% sequentially. Gross margin is also expected to fall within the range of 18% to 20%, compared to 22.5% in the first quarter.
Still, the first quarter saw SMIC’s wafer shipments increase by 15% from the previous quarter and by about 28% year-on-year.
In the earnings call, SMIC attributed that growth to customer shipment pull in, brought by changes in geopolitics and increased demand driven by government policies such as domestic trade-in programs and consumption subsidies.
In another positive sign for the company, its first-quarter capacity utilization— the percentage of total available manufacturing capacity that is being used at any given time— reached 89.6%, up 4.1% quarter on quarter.
“SMIC’s nearly 90% utilization rate reflects strong domestic demand for semiconductors, likely driven by smartphone and consumer electronics production,” said Ray Wang, a Washington-based semiconductor and technology analyst, adding that the demand was also reflected in the company’s strong quarterly revenue growth.
Meanwhile, the company said in the earnings call that it is “currently in an important period of capacity construction, roll out, and continuously increasing market share.”
However, SMIC’s first-quarter research and development spending decreased to $148.9 million, down from $217 million in the previous quarter.
Amid increased demand, it will be crucial for SMIC to continue ramping up their capacity, Simon Chen, principal analyst of semiconductor manufacturing at Informa Tech told CNBC.
SMIC generates most of its revenue from older-generation semiconductors, often referred to as “mature-node” or “legacy” chips, which are commonly found in consumer electronics and industrial equipment.
The state-backed chipmaker is critical to Beijing’s ambitions to build a self-sufficient semiconductor supply chain, with the government pumping billions into such efforts. Over 84% of its first-quarter revenue was derived from customers in China.
“The localization transformation of the supply chain has been strengthened, and more manufacturing demand has shifted back domestically,” a representative said Friday.
However, chip analysts say the chipmaker’s ability to increase capacity in advance chips — used in applications that demand higher levels of computing performance and efficiency at higher yields — is limited.
This is due to U.S.-led export controls, which prevent it from accessing some of the world’s most advanced chip-making equipment from the Netherlands-based ASML.
Nevertheless, the chipmaker appears to be making some breakthroughs. Advanced chips manufactured by SMIC have reportedly appeared in various Huawei products, notably in the Mate 60 Pro smartphone and some AI processors.
In the earnings call, the company also said it would closely monitor the potential impacts of the U.S.-China trade war on its demand, noting a lack of visibility for the second half of the year.
Phelix Lee, an equity analyst for Morningstar focused on semiconductors, told CNBC that the impacts of U.S. tariffs on SMIC are limited due to most of its revenue coming from Chinese customers.
While U.S. customers make up about 8-15% of revenue on a quarterly basis, the chips usually remain and are consumed in Chinese products and end users, he said.
“There could be some disruption to chemical, gas, and equipment supply; but the firm is working on alternatives in China and other non-U.S. regions,” he added.
SMIC’s Hong Kong-listed shares have gained over 32.23% year-to-date.
Close-up of a hand holding a cellphone displaying the Amazon Pharmacy system, Lafayette, California, September 15, 2021.
Smith Collection | Gado | Getty Images
Amazon is expanding its online pharmacy to fill prescription pet medications, the company announced Thursday.
The company said it has added “hundreds of commonly prescribed pet medications” to its U.S. site, ranging from flea and tick solutions to treatments for chronic conditions.
Prescriptions are purchased via Amazon’s storefront and must be approved by a veterinarian. Online pet pharmacy Vetsource will oversee the dispensing and delivery of medications, said Amazon, adding that items are typically delivered within two to six days.
Amazon launched its digital drugstore in 2020 with the added perk of discounts and free delivery for Prime members. The company has been working to speed up prescription shipments over the past year, bringing same-day delivery to a handful of U.S. cities. Last October, Amazon set a goal to make speedy medicine delivery available in nearly half of the U.S. in 2025.
The new pet medication offerings puts Amazon into more direct competition with online pet pharmacy Chewy, as well as Walmart, which offers pet prescription delivery.
Amazon Pharmacy is part of the company’s growing stable of healthcare offerings, which also includes One Medical, the primary care provider it acquired for roughly $3.9 billion in July 2022. Amazon’s online pharmacy was born out of the company’s 2018 acquisition of online pharmacy PillPack.
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