Smoke from Russian wildfires seen by the Suomi NPP satellite on September 18th, 2016. Image: NOAA/NASA
Fires in northwest Siberia on July 19th, 2016. Image: NASA Earth Observatory
Excerpt:
As enormous wildfires in Canada and the United States make headlines on the daily, Siberia has been burning ferociously all summer, and nobody seems to be noticing.
Large wildfires are not unusual in Siberia’s boreal forests, but in the past few years, this sparsely-populated region has seen some of the most intense summertime conflagrations in its history. And the few dispatches we’ve heard from Siberia this summer—coupled with satellite images—suggest the 2016 fire season may be one for the record-books.
Data on the fires, many of which are triggered by lightning storms and which go unsuppressed unless they threaten villages or infrastructure, is sketchy and conflicting. In June, an analysis by Greenpeace Russia claimed that 3.5 million hectares of land—a region the size of New Hampshire and Connecticut combined—had burned this year so far. But the Russian government only reported 669,000 hectares burnt for the same period.
Satellite images captured in July painted an even grimmer picture, suggesting the fires could to be up to 10 times worse than the Russian government was reporting.
“It seems that autumn fires and wide range of summer fires occurred due to global warming,” Verkhovets said. “And we expect intensification of fires in Siberia as direct effect of climate change.”
