Northeastern Siberia is a place where people take Arctic temperatures in stride. But 100-degree days are another matter entirely.
Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:
For the third year in a row, residents of northeastern Siberia are reeling from the worst wildfires they can remember, and many are left feeling helpless, angry and alone.
They endure the coldest winters outside Antarctica with little complaint. But in recent years, summer temperatures in the Russian Arctic have gone as high as 100 degrees, feeding enormous blazes that thaw what was once permanently frozen ground.
Last year, wildfires scorched more than 60,000 square miles of forest and tundra, an area the size of Florida. That is more than four times the area that burned in the United States during its devastating 2020 fire season. This year, more than 30,000 square miles have already burned in Russia, according to government statistics, with the region only two weeks into its peak fire season.
Scientists say that the huge fires have been made possible by the extraordinary summer heat in recent years in northern Siberia, which has been warming faster than just about any other part of the world. And the impact may be felt far from Siberia. The fires may potentially accelerate climate change by releasing enormous quantities of greenhouse gases and destroying Russiaâs vast boreal forests, which absorb carbon out of the atmosphere.
Last year, the record-setting fires in the remote Siberian region of Yakutia released roughly as much carbon dioxide as did all the fuel consumption in Mexico in 2018, according to Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service in Reading, England.
Now, Yakutia â a region four times the size of Texas, with its own culture and Turkic language â is burning again.
Life here revolves around the northern forest, known as the taiga. It is the source of berries, mushrooms, meat, timber and firewood. When it burns, the permafrost below it thaws more quickly, turning lush woods into impenetrable swamps.
Some forest fires are normal, but scientists say they have accelerated to an extraordinary pace in the last three years, threatening the sustainability of the taiga ecosystem.
âIf we donât have the forest, we donât have life,â said Maria Nogovitsina, a retired kindergarten director in the village of Magaras, population of about 1,000, 60 miles outside Yakutsk.
As many villagers have done recently, Ms. Nogovitsina made an offering to the earth to keep the fires away: She tore up a few Russian-style pancakes and sprinkled the ground with fermented milk.
âNature is angry at us,â she said.
