*

2024 wildfire season ranks among top six in last 50 years

*

Jasper, Alberta fire caused C$880 million in insured

damages

*

Experts warn of longer, more destructive wildfire seasons

due to

climate change

By Nia Williams

REVELSTOKE, British Columbia, Sept 12 (Reuters) - With

summer drawing to a close in Canada, the 2024 wildfire season is

shaping up as one of the most destructive on record, largely due

to the devastation caused by a blaze that ripped through a

tourist town in the Canadian Rockies.

Based on total area scorched, the season ranks among the top

six over the last half century. Even so, 2024 is turning out to

be much less severe than last year - the worst on record - and

not as bad as many had feared.

The total cost of wildfire damage this year surged in July

when a third of the popular tourist town of Jasper, Alberta, was

destroyed by a blaze. The fire caused an estimated C$880 million

($646.73 million) in insured damages, according to the Insurance

Bureau of Canada.

In total, 5.3 million hectares (13.1 million acres) have

burned to date in 2024, according to the Canadian Interagency

Forest Fire Centre, and more than 600 fires are still raging

across the country, mainly in British Columbia.

That makes 2024 the worst season since 1995, with the

exception of last year, when a record-breaking 17 million

hectares burned and released more carbon than some of the

world's largest-carbon emitting countries.

Wildfire season in Canada typically runs from April, when

the snow melts, until September or October, with activity

peaking in July and August. Climate scientists say average

temperatures will rise in Canada as the world warms, leading to

longer and more destructive wildfire seasons.

In April the Canadian government warned 2024 could

potentially be another "catastrophic" wildfire season due on

ongoing drought in the western provinces and forecasts of a

hotter-than-average summer.

"We were bracing ourselves for what could potentially have

been as bad a year as 2023," said Alberta Wildfire information

manager Christie Tucker, adding the province added a third

night-vision helicopter, hired an extra hundred firefighters and

declared an early start to the 2024 season as a precaution.

But dry conditions in June and July and an unusually high

number of lightning-caused fires still sparked hundreds of

blazes across the province, including the one that hit Jasper.

"That had a significant impact on everyone in Alberta,"

Tucker added.

The threat of nearby wildfires prompted Suncor Energy ( SU )

, Canada's second-largest oil company, to curtail

production at its Firebag site in northern Alberta, but the

impact on oil supply was much less than some previous summers.

'ZOMBIE' FIRES

Wildfire agencies also had to contend with scores of

so-called zombie fires that ignited last summer and burned

throughout the long Canadian winter.

"I have never seen a year like that where there's been so

much fire that was because of a previous year. Some of them were

the size of Prince Edward Island, they were just huge," said

Mike Flannigan, a wildfire expert and research chair at Thompson

Rivers University in British Columbia.

Prince Edward Island, one of Canada's Maritime provinces,

has an area of 566,000 hectares, about the same size as the

Toronto metropolitan area.

Flannigan estimated that almost half a million hectares,

or nearly 10%, of the land burned in Canada in 2024 was due to

overwintering fires from 2023.

Fewer evacuation orders and less widespread smoke - which

last year affected millions of people across the northeastern

United States as well as Canada - contributed to a sense that

2024 was a milder year for wildfires.

Kira Hoffman, a postdoctoral researcher and wildfire

ecologist at the University of British Columbia, said western

Canada was helped by a spell of cooler weather in late August

that dampened some fire activity, but by historical measures,

2024 was still a very destructive season.

"It's that shifting baseline syndrome. Last year was so

extremely bad that this year we think only a third of that

burning is pretty good," she added. "But there's nothing normal

about it."

Many experts warn the trend of longer periods of very hot

and dry "fire weather" and increasingly bad wildfire seasons

will continue as a result of climate change.

"If you look at either the total area burned or number of

wildfires year over year or total damage caused by wildfires it

goes up and down, but you draw the average trend line and

everything is going up," said Ryan Ness, director of adaptation

at the Canadian Climate Institute.

($1 = 1.3607 Canadian dollars)