BANFF NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA
Canada’s first national park, established in 1885 in the Rockies, will be celebrating its 215th birthday—and showing its age accordingly. Compared to the five “hot” (that is, 30-degree-plus) days we had in 2019, prairie dwellers will sweat through 34 of them in 2100. Skiers and snowboarders should probably consider a new hobby altogether, since snow will be a rare and unpredictable event in a shorter winter season. Rivers will be flowing furiously with snowmelt much earlier in the spring—starting the growing season more than a month before it starts now—but by summer, farmers and everyone else will face a bigger and much more dangerous problem: droughts and wildfires.
“Wildfire season is already starting earlier in the spring and lasting later into the fall,” says Megan Kirchmeier-Young, a research scientist at Climate Change Canada. For this wildfire expert, the inevitability of wildfires is first and foremost a numbers game. “The earlier the snow melts, the longer the fire season is. There are just more days that fire is a possibility.” In 2100, Banff’s previously lush green vegetation will have been slow-cooked into what might be best described as kindling.“Warming temperatures will contribute to the drying out of fuel, by which we mean anything on the ground that is going to burn, and the drier the fuel is, the more susceptible it is to fire, and the more the fire is likely to spread,” says Kirchmeier-Young.
An increased wildfire risk means Albertans in 2100 could live under constant fire watch and will have to practise regular safety and evacuation drills. No news on what strange futuristic tech might deliver it, but residents will likely subscribe to something like today’s Alberta Emergency Alert, which Banff residents diligently practised in May to prepare for a catastrophic wildfire—something Banff fire chief Silvio Adamo called “a very likely scenario.” Then and now, homes should be stocked with emergency supplies, a first aid kit, respirator masks to protect lungs against particulate matter during the inevitable decline of air quality, plus a detailed escape plan to evacuate.