Early Summer 2024 Arctic Wildfire

Slower start in North America but heating up in Siberia

Jun 15, 2024

The 2024 wildfire season in the North is off to a very different start than 2023, especially in Arctic Canada, where the total area burned is a small fraction of the area burned through mid-June 2023.

****At the time of year the northern wildfire situation can change quickly. This is a snapshot of the situation as reported/available on Friday, June 14, 2024****

Arctic Perspective

Figure 1 shows the hemisphere wildfire activity from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) service for June 14, 2024. Focusing on the Arctic (poleward of 60N ), the strongest and most widespread detections are in eastern Siberia, while the North America and Nordic Arctic has only a few detections.

Fig. 1 Fire activity analysis for June 14, 2024. Note the color scale, with red colors denoting lower radiative power than yellow colors. Graphic courtesy Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.

North American Details

Figure 2 shows the FIRMS plot of fires for June 14, 2024.

Fig. 2 Plot of active fires in northern North America as of June 14. Graphic courtesy Fire Information for Resource Management System.

In the Northwest Territories, the FS004-24 fire, southeast of Fort Simpson near Highway 1, has burned 11,894 ha (29,300 acres) which is slightly more than half of the total area burned in the NWT thus far this season, 21,639 ha (53,500 acres). This is less than 10 percent of the area that had burned in the NWT in 2023 to this date. There are a couple other fires in the Fort Simpson and South Slavey Districts that have burned over 2,000 ha (5,000 acres).

In the Yukon Territory, 15,694 ha (38,800 acres) have burned to June 14, with the Donjek fire northeast of Beaver Creek accounting for 11,170 ha (27,600 acres) of this total. Smoke from this wildfire extended northwestward into central Interior Alaska June 9-12.

In Alaska, 17,100 ha (42,259 acres) has burned to June 14, which is about 20 percent below the 1993-2023 median area burned to this point in the season. The McDonald fire, southeast of Fairbanks, accounts for most of the statewide total, at 13,200 ha (32,726 acres). The fire threatened a number of cabins west of Harding Lake and produced periods of significant smoke June 8-12 from Harding Lake to Fairbanks. The June 14 update on this fire is here. There are also a three significant tundra fires burning in northwest Alaska. The Goldbug fire, southeast of Deering on the eastern eastern Seward Peninsula is now estimated at 600 ha (1,500 acres), and is likely responsible for hazy conditions reported from southern Seward Peninsula communities June 9-13. Additionally, two tundra fires are burning north of Kotzebue in the Noatak River valley: the Tututalak and Urgoon fires together have burned about 320 ha (800 acres) as of June 14.

Russian Arctic

It’s always difficult to know in near real time what’s happening with Russian Arctic wildfire, but on June 11 the Moscow Times reported that the Sakha Republic (eastern Siberia) declared a wildfire state of emergency, with about 83,000 ha (205,000 acres) burned. The CAMS aerosols and PM2.5 particulate matter “nowcasts” for June 14 shows several bullseyes in the region that are very likely from wildfires.