The Russian army has sent water jets to support thousands of firefighters in the fight against huge wildfires in Siberia. The area is known for its frozen tundra and is now sweltering under heat waves.
800,000 hectares of forest are burning, and the worst-hit Yakutia region in the north has been in a state of emergency for several weeks, as climate scientists have warned of potential long-term effects.
On Tuesday, more than 2,600 firefighters extinguished fires in Yakutia, the region that has been the first in recent years.
“We are suffocating, and our lungs are poisoned by the pungent smoke,” wrote one of two online petitions written by residents of Yakutia to President Vladimir Putin. They demanded more equipment and power to extinguish the fire.
In recent years, the annual fire season in Russia has become more fierce due to the unusually high temperatures in the tundra of northern Siberia due to climate change. This year, the temperature has hit a record high.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday: “Due to the abnormal heat wave, the fire risk in almost the entire country is severe.”
Shoigu said Putin ordered the Ministry of Defense to assist local authorities, and the army deployed several Ilyushin Il-76 water jets to extinguish the flames in the sky, but did not specify how many planes were sent.
Last week, a fire in the Chelyabinsk region of central Russia killed a man and destroyed dozens of village houses.
The Siberian fires have raised concerns about the thawing of permafrost and peatlands, which will release long-term storage of carbon in frozen tundra.
The ash from a fire can also cover nearby snow and darken it, thereby absorbing more solar radiation and warming faster.
According to data from the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS), in 2019 and 2020, wildfires in Yakutia caused the region to release record-breaking greenhouse gases as part of the European Union’s observation program.
Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at CAMS, said that in the past six weeks, fires in the area produced approximately 150 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent-close to Venezuela’s 2017 annual fossil fuel emissions.
“We are still piecing together information, trying to understand what this means for the climate,” he said. “This year we have not seen so many fires in the Arctic Circle in this area, but in the past three to four days, we have begun to see some hot spots and a lot of smoke,” Palrington said.
The country has been struggling with a heat wave, which has broken many temperature records in western Russia.Moscow experienced the sultry heat The hottest June in 120 years After the temperature reaches 34.7C.
In Siberia, the city of Yakutsk once reached 35 degrees Celsius; the national weather forecast agency said that Verkhoyansk in the region is regarded as one of the coldest places on the planet, with temperatures exceeding 30 degrees Celsius.
“The temperature is really high, 8-10 degrees higher than normal. Romain Velfand, the director of science at the institution, said in a briefing that it is really unusual that the temperature in the north exceeds 30 degrees.
He said that in the coming week, temperatures should drop and rainfall will increase. These factors should slightly reduce the risk of new fires, although they may not prevent existing fires from spreading.
Similar conditions in parts of Canada and the Pacific Northwest of the United States have also led to wildfires.Nearly 60 wildfires were Burning in the hot 10 states of the western United States On Tuesday, the largest, in Oregon, consumed almost twice the area of Portland.
“With climate change, these fires will continue to occur,” said Andrei Segorev, head of the WWF Russia Forest Project Office, who urged more funding for local fire protection efforts. “In this case, the question is, what to do?”
