If you are a climate change denier, better miss this BBC report. If you are not, feel sad for future generations.

Even in the dead of Canada’s winter, the embers of last year’s record-setting wildfire season remain. So-called zombie fires are burning under thick layers of snow at an unprecedented rate, raising fears about what the coming summer may bring.

People driving on the highway through the town of Fort Nelson, British Columbia (BC) in the winter can easily see – and smell – the clouds of white smoke flowing from the soil around them.

Sonja Leverkus, a firefighter and scientist who is local to the small north-eastern BC town, recalled driving during a snowstorm in November, but the snowfall didn’t look white.

Rather, she said, it was blueish-grey because of the smoke in the air.

“I’ve never experienced a snowstorm that smelled like smoke,” said Ms Leverkus, who has lived in northern BC for more than 15 years…

Scientific American, How ‘Zombie’ Fires Rise from the Dead in Spring

Some wildfires just won’t die—even though they’re buried. Although temperatures and shortening days limit wildfire activity at the end of the Northern Hemisphere’s summer, “zombie” fires can smolder underground all winter and reemerge in spring. In what investigators say is the first field study to examine how this phenomenon works and its ecological impacts, they found that the stealthy flames draw nourishment from a surprising subterranean source.

A satellite-based study published in 2021 revealed that zombie or “overwinter” fires are becoming more common in Arctic forests, probably because of climate change…