India, Sept. 25 -- Smoke emissions from wildfires resulted in more than 40,000 excess annual deaths in the United States in the past decade, a new study has found.

Researchers from Stanford University, publishing their findings in the journal Nature, estimated that an additional 41,380 additional deaths were recorded between 2011 and 2020 due to smoke emitted from wildfires in Canada and the western United States. They warned that rising temperatures could worsen the crisis, increasing deaths by over 70 per cent by 2050.

The study noted that though wildfires are not a new phenomenon in the western US, warmer and drier conditions are exacerbating the crisis by fuelling bigger blazes that are more frequent and sustain longer as compared t...