For the fourth summer in a row, the Northwest Territories, Canada has seen far above the historically average wildfire activity. However, in other fire-prone areas in the Arctic the season has been uncommonly quiet, including in Alaska and the Sakha Republic, Russia. Unlike lower latitudes, the high latitude wildfire season typically peaks in July, as August usually brings cooler temperatures, higher humidity and fewer thunderstorms than earlier in the summer to ignite new fires.
North America Wildfire
Wildfire in northern North America through the end of July was centered on the Northwest Territories, Canada, where 97.5 percent of the area burned in wildfire in Arctic North America has occurred (Table 1). The only (full season) with such a high concentration of wildfire (since 1980) was 2014, which also had about 97 percent of northern North America wildfire in the Northwest Territories. The Yukon Territory and Alaska wildfire activity has been quite low for the entire season: in fact the Yukon Territory is looking at potentially the lowest area burned in decades.
Table 1. Area burned (hectares) in northern North America by political
divisions through June 30, 2026 with a comparison to the same date in
2025.
Most of the wildfires in the Northwest Territories have been north and west of Yellowknife (Fig. 1). The largest fire has been the ZF018-26 fire southeast of Great Bear Lake at 219,900 ha (543,000 acres). Although not large in the grand scheme, there were several wildfires in the extreme southwest corner of Nunavut, just north of the Manitoba border. Any wildfire in Nunavut is unusual and this appears to be the most area burned since 2010.
Fig 1. Wildfire perimeters in northern Canada as of July 31, 2026 with
selected fires annotated. Graphic courtesy Natural Resources Canada.
In the Dehcho region, the communities of Wrigley (Fig. 2) and Fort Simpson, NWT were threatened by wildfire in June and early July, and at least one home was reported lost in Fort Simpson. And of course, wildfire smoke has caused poor air quality at times over nearly all of the NWT.
Fig. 5 Wildfire FS015-26 outside Wrigley, NT on July 18, 2026.Image courtesy of Cabin Radio.
Alaska wildfire
2026 has been a slow wildfire season in Alaska in terms of total area burned. Through the end of July only about 43,000 acres had burned, less than 10 percent of the 1993-2025 median and third lowest during that time. July’s total (Fig. 3) of 13,700 acres (5,500 ha) was less than half of the June total and fourth lowest for the month in the past 34 years.
Fig. 3 Area burned in Alaska in July each year 1993 to 2026. Data courtesy AICC.
Unlike 2023, which had minimal wildfire activity until the end of July, in large part due to a lack of lightning, this summer there were two episodes of significant lightning, one in late June and another in early July (Fig. 4). Total strikes for the season are only slightly below the post-2012 median, when there current Alaska Fire Service lightning detection network came online. And there have been plenty of lightning started fires. However, fuel conditions and weather have not conducive to wildfire growth. I suspect a lack of sustained hot and dry weather this summer is a significant factor in keeping fires small.
Fig 4 Daily lightning strikes in Alaska May 15 to July 31, 2026. Data courtesy Alaska Interagency Coordination Center.
At the end of July, the largest fire in the state was the Kilolitna fire, north of Tanana, at 4,500 acres (1800 ha). In an active season, there might be two or three dozen fires larger than that in Alaska.
Arctic Eurasia wildfire
Near-real-time estimates of wildfire activity across the vast Russian Arctic was never easy, and since 2022 it’s been nearly impossible to get anything like reliable and comprehensive information. However, a new online tool, Fire Emissions Watch, using data from Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS) is now out (press release on the tool is here) and will greatly assist in wildfire monitoring in the Eurasian Arctic. I thank Mark Parrington, senior scientist at ECMWF (on Bluesky at mparrington.bsky.social) for bringing this resource to my attention.
For Arctic monitoring purposes this new tool is especially useful because it provides regional and sub-national scale estimates of fire radiative power (a measure of heat output) since 2003. Fire radiative power (FRP) is related to but not exactly correlated with area burned: small fires can burn hot and larger fires can burn with lower intensity. But determining area burned by a given fire or region can be an arduous process, especially in landscapes that regularly burn. Fire radiative power is derived from satellite observations and so is available globally in near real time.
With that background, through the end of July, wildfire activity has been the highest since 2017 in western (Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug) and 2019 in central Siberia (Krasnoyarsk Krai). In eastern Siberia (Sakha Republic), climatologically the heart of Arctic Asia wildfire, 2026 wildfire activity was very low until the second half of July, though at the end of the month total FRP was still less than half of the 2003-25 median (Fig. 5). The FPR values across these regions are much lower than that for the Northwest Territories, Canada.
Fig.
5 2003-2026 time series of total fire radiative power in from west to
east across the Russia Arctic east of the Ural Mountains. Note the very
different vertical axes scales. Graphics courtesy Copernicus Atmosphere
Monitoring Service (CAMS).