In just one day, an area of land covering 1,860 square miles of the Northwest Territory has burned. That’s a zone 50 percent larger than the entire state of Rhode Island going up in smoke over just one 24 hour period. And as you can see from the GOES satellite animation below, the volume of smoke being produced by fires burning in a permafrost thaw region is quite extreme:

https://twitter.com/DanLindsey77/status/897485241413251074

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Over the past week, the Arctic and sub-Arctic Northwest Territories (NWT) of Canada have been baking under an intense late-summer heatwave. At a time when NWT temperatures should be cooling down from July peaks, most days of the past seven have seen the mercury rise into the upper 80s and lower-to-middle 90s (Fahrenheit).

These 10-35 degree (F) above average temperatures sweltered coniferous forests, peat bogs and thawing permafrost. The high temperatures also unleashed Arctic and sub-Arctic thunderstorms. A new…