Tuesday, July 13, 2021

East and West - The Same

 While much of the media's attention is focused upon the record-breaking heatwave in the Western USA and Canada with wildfires raging through forests, the Siberian tundra is also enduring an unprecedented rise in temperatures. 

In Siberia, the city of Yakutsk hit 35C at one point; the region's city of Verkhoyansk - seen as one of the coldest places on earth - saw temperatures of over 30C, the state weather forecast agency said.

"The temperature is really high, 8-10 degrees higher than the norm. It's really unusual for the temperature to be over 30 degrees towards the north," the agency's head of science, Roman Vilfand said at a briefing.

Fires are tearing across some 800,000 hectares of Russian forest. 

The hardest-hit region of Yakutia in the north has been in a state of emergency for weeks as climate scientists sound the alarm about the potential long-term impact.

"We're suffocating, our lungs are being poisoned by acrid smoke," reads one of two online petitions by Yakutia's residents addressed to President Vladimir Putin. They are asking for more equipment and forces to combat the fires.

Fires in Russia's central Chelyabinsk region, meanwhile, last week killed one man and destroyed dozens of village homes.

The Siberian fires have raised fears about the permafrost and peatlands thawing, releasing methane and carbon long stored in the frozen tundra. Ash from the fires could blanket nearby snow cover, turning it dark so that it absorbs more solar radiation and warms even faster.

In both 2019 and 2020, Yakutia's wildfires led to record amounts of greenhouse gases being released from the region, according to the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), part of an European Union observation programme.

In just the last six weeks, fires in the region have spewed out around 150 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent - close to the 2017 annual fossil fuel emissions of Venezuela, said Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at CAMS.

Planes dump water on Siberian wildfires, residents plead for help (trust.org)

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