‘The result is spectacular': Manitoba fossil museum reconstructs massive dinosaur skull
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CTV News
7 hours ago
- CTV News
A look at how wildfire predictions held up throughout the years
The Mount Underwood wildfire is seen in this handout photo, southwest of Port Alberni, B.C., on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Handout — BC Wildfire Service (Mandatory Credit) As Canada's forests burn, climate change scientists warn the increasingly warm planet will continue to take part in fuelling more frequent and violent wildfires. That is their forecast now, but how did their predictions hold up over the past decades? 'We are following the trend that scientists have predicted for some time,' says the director of research on adaptation at the Canadian Climate Institute Ryan Ness. CTV News archives shows that research two decades ago linked climate and a rise in fire frequencies. A 2006 television report points to a study that concluded new evidence showed climate change, not forest management and logging, was the main factor behind a spike of wildfires in California. 'We see this increase in fire frequency is well correlated with warming temperatures and the arrival of earlier springs in the last 16 or 17 years compared with previous decades,' said fire ecologist Thomas Swetnam, at the time. Ten years ago, as 196 countries signed on to the Paris Climate Agreement that aimed to curb global warming, a study in the Climatic Change journal projected that the annual frequency of fire spread days in Canada could increase by 35 to 400 per cent by 2050, with the greatest increases in Alberta and Saskatchewan. 'We can look back to papers published in the 1990s that predict an increase in area burned mainly because of climate change and rising temperatures,' says research scientist at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Nathan Gillett. Statistics from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) show that trend is proving to be a reality on the ground, not just a hypothesis. 'Winters are shorter, there is less snow to melt and keep our forest moist in the spring. Extreme heat further dries out the forests and turns them into fuel for intensifying wildfires,' says Ness. The Gault Nature Reserve, a McGill University-owned site an hour's drive from Montreal, aims to protect more than 1,000 hectares of natural forest and a trail network. Evidence of the dry conditions is on display. 'It can really spark, and you never know the consequences of throwing a cigarette or a campsite that is not well maintained,' says McGill's David Maneli, associate director at the reserve. To avoid risks, smoking is banned on the site. Maneli also says hikers who come to take in the majestic sights on trails that lead them to the top of a mountain, also learn valuable lessons about the need to protect forests. So far this year, wildfires have burned more than 7.3 million hectares, more than double the ten-year average for this time of the year. 'What we would hope is that people would take these wildfire seasons as a sign that things are not right, and that indeed projections and predictions of scientists are coming to pass. They were accurate,' says Ness. And now, scientists warn if the trend continue, the planet will continue to burn even hotter and help spread wildfires.
CBC
8 hours ago
- CBC
How researchers discovered Canada's 1st dinosaur-era dragonfly fossil
A McGill University undergraduate uncovered the fossil in 2023 during a digging expedition in Alberta's Dinosaur Provincial Park. The finding sheds light on a 30-million-year gap in the evolution of dragonflies.
CTV News
a day ago
- CTV News
Reaching for the stars: Montreal students' space mission
Concordia students launched a rocket from Northern Quebec, aiming to hit an exploration milestone in Canadian space. Genevieve Beauchemin reports. A team of Concordia University students gathered at a remote base camp on Cree territory in northern Quebec to launch the largest, most powerful student-built rocket ever made. The event captured on a livestream, may not have gone off quite as planned, still it marked an engineering breakthrough after years of effort. Cheers greeted the moment just after the countdown when a ball of white light sped up to the sky. 'This is insane,' said one student staring up at the rocket. The Space Concordia team's goal was to breach the edge of space at an altitude of 100 kilometres. Their liquid fuel rocket, Starsailor, blasted off at 5:34 am. They now say the rocket did not cross the Kármán line — the internationally recognized boundary of space. 'What we can tell you, is that it looks like the rocket burned out earlier and separated earlier than planned,' said Space Concordia's Hannah Halcro on the livestream. The liftoff was seven years in the making and sparked by an intercollegiate space race. In 2018, teams of universities and colleges entered a contest to launch a liquid fuel rocket into space. That was cancelled due to the pandemic, but the Concordia team forged ahead, determined to make history on its own terms. Over the years, more than 700 students contributed to the project, investing thousands of hours into design, testing, and development. Their rocket represented not just academic ambition, but a dream shared across generations of students. They built a space program and worked in collaboration with the Cree community in the Mistassini region to prepare for launch. Transport Canada cleared the mission for takeoff and the local airspace was closed, but two previous attempts were scrubbed due to poor weather conditions. This time, it was all systems go. But this is rocket science, and so it is hard. Some students say they feared the rocket may not launch, that it could blow up the launch tower, and so while not reaching space is not ideal, they say, it is far from a failure. 'The sky is not the limit obviously,' Space Concordia President Simon Randy told CTV News at the end of a long day. 'We have proven that we have a seat at the table of launch into space.' The team is now analyzing flight data and will look at debris to determine Starsailor's exact trajectory. Still the future engineers' hopes for the launch went far beyond expectations. 'See you in space next time,' Halcro signed off.
