eastern canada and the us of issued health advisory is because of the poor air quality, the speak to mike flanagan, who's a professor wildland fire at thomson rivers university. he's in edmonton, alberta, joining us from there. well controls is 0. so as we're saying, hundreds of fires burning right across the country, tell us what it's like an alberta and what impact the wall as far as are having their so elbow started off with a really active fire season earlier in may. right now the extreme fires are northern alberta and northeast in b. c, southern northwest territories. of course 2 backs on fire right now. right. so what are the primary causes of these wildfires, and are there any sort of specific factors contributing to this severity this time around? so in queue back, most of these fires are lightning that most of the fires in, in the rest of canada are human caused in spring. lightning generally dominates once we get to summer and we're getting starting to get summer, but we've had that hot, dry, windy weather and this is unusual to get in such a large area from coast to coast. and yeah, it'

mike flanagan is a professor of wild land fire at thompson rivers university. he says the situation in canada is unprecedented. in to back, most of these fires are lightning that most of the fires in, in the rest of canada are human caused in spring. lightning generally dominates once we get to summer and we're getting starting to get summer, but we've had that hot, dry, windy weather and this is unusual to get in such a large area from coast to coast. we are seeing more fire because of human cause. climate change i cannot be clearer than that western united states has seen a quite crippling of area burn since 19 seventies. canada seen a doubling up area burn since the early seventy's, and this is largely not so late, but largely attributed to human cause. climate change fairly, the warmer it is, the more fire we see because warmer weather means longer fire seasons, warmer weather means more lightning, especially in the summer where most of our area burned occurs. and warmer weather means that, that the stairs more efficient at sucking the most you're out of th