Wildfires In Alberta, B.C Blamed On El Nino, As Season Kicks Off Early

VANCOUVER - Experts are blaming El Nino for speeding up nature's clock and forcing firefighters to deploy weeks ahead of normal to battle wildfires across rural Western Canada.

They say the natural phenomenon that cycles every two to seven years has been activated early this year and is predicted to accelerate wildfire activity across the northwest.

Warming ‘Will Double Extreme El Niños’

LONDON—An El Niño is part of a natural cycle: a huge blister of heat in the equatorial Pacific, usually around Christmastime, that periodically triggers unseasonal floods in the western US, and extreme heat and forest fires in the Indonesian rainforest and the Australian bush.

It happens and seems to have happened through human history. It has nothing to do with global warming or climate change. Except this: according to the latest study by climate scientists in Australia, the US, China and Britain, global warming is likely to make the most extreme El Niño events happen twice as frequently.

Study: Climate Shifts Cause War

Top military brass, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the UN Secretary General have all warned that climate change will create conflicts in the future. But environmental shifts are already causing wars, argues a team of experts in a new paper in Nature (PDF) published this month.

El Niño, the oscillating period of warmer temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, brings with it higher temperatures on land and lower rainfall every three to seven years. According to the researchers, the weather phenomenon doubles the risk of civil conflicts in 90 tropical countries. They also believe it has been a potential factor in 21 percent of the world's conflicts over a 54-year span.

As the authors explain, events like droughts put strain on food and water resources, which can cause conflict. Natural disasters can also cause disease, famine, and economic distress, which may create tensions between factions.