Alberta Wildfires 2023

Date: October 6, 2023

Author: Tim Platnich

One may be under the impression, reading the media, that wildfires in Alberta are on a substantial upward trend culminating in a record-breaking fire season in 2023. There is no question that 2023 was a record-breaking wildfire season in the area burned. At the time of this writing, over 2 million hectares of area has been burned and 2023 is not yet over.

Has there been an upward trend in Alberta wildfires?

Let’s look at the data:

All Data from Alberta.ca website.

This data shows that the number of fires has trended downwards since 2006 – 17 years. Even the number of wildfires in 2023 was less than previous years. The data also shows that prior to 2023, the area burned was basically flat. 2023 is one data point out of 17 data points. It, by itself, is not indicative of any trend. Following is a graph up to 2022 that shows the trends in wildfire numbers and area burned without counting 2023.

Not quite as apocalyptic as the media might suggest.

Note that 2006 is as far back as I have gone in the government dataset. I will endeavour to go back further in time in the near future.