Colossal fires are burning through Siberia, home to one of the coldest places on Earth, during a record heat wave.
Fires have broken out all across the taiga, even in the northwest province of Karelia, which had to evacuate 600 people, according to the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry. The main region affected is the Sakha Republic, a large Russian province in eastern Siberia. Local emergency officials told the Associated Press on Sunday that there are 187 fires raging in Sakha alone.
“For a month already, you can’t see anything through the smoke … Emergency workers have come, and villagers are also fighting the fires, but they can’t put them out, they can’t stop them. Everything is on fire,” Varvara, a villager in the Sakha Republic, told the Guardian.
The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry reported that 6,500 people are involved in the firefighting effort, many of whom are local volunteers. Firefighting planes and helicopters have been deployed as well.
According to Greenpeace Russia, the total area burned by Siberian wildfires since the beginning of 2020 is over 73,000 square miles, an area larger than the country of Syria (approximately 71,500 square miles).
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The fires in Siberia are burning with unusual intensity, producing carbon emissions second only to those of last year, according to data collected by the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. At the current rate, the total emissions produced by the fires this year could surpass the total last year, which set a record.
The fires have produced a thick layer of smoke that is making life difficult for locals, especially residents of the regional capital of Yakutsk. Fine particulate matter from the blazes, known as PM 2.5, is currently 24 times above the World Health Organization’s exposure recommendation, according to IQAir.
Russian officials blame the inferno on climate change.
“Of course, there is only one reason — global climate changes. They are taking place, we see that it is getting hotter every year in Yakutia [another name for the Sakha Republic]. We are now living in the hottest, driest summer that has been in the history of meteorological observation in Yakutia since the end of the 19th century,” Aisen Nikolaev, head of the Sakha Republic, told Yakutia 24 on Friday.
A recent study by an international team of scientists agreed with this assessment.
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Yakutsk, designated the “world’s coldest city” by National Geographic, is undergoing a historic heat wave for the second consecutive year.
Last year, a nearby town experienced what may have been the single highest temperature ever recorded within the Arctic Circle, at 100 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Russia’s meteorological service.
