Gigantic wildfires are burning across Siberia on a record scale that is larger than all the fires raging this summer around the world combined.
For years, wildfires have been occurring every summer – burning across a heavily forested region known as the taiga, or Boreal forest in Siberia. However, the unprecedented scale of the fires in recent years is due to climate change, according to scientists, along with negligence, and underfunded forestry management services.
The worst-hit region for the fires this year is the Russian Republic of Yakutia, a vast semi-autonomous republic nearly 3,000 miles east of Moscow. Yakutia is famous for its climate extremes, possibly being one of the coldest inhabited regions on earth in the winter.
Yakutia can be divided into three great vegetation belts. About 40 percent of Yakutia lies above the Arctic Circle and all of it is covered by permafrost which greatly influences the region’s ecology and limits forests in the southern region.
The republic’s middle region is defined as being Arctic and subarctic, with vast areas of lichen and moss, favored by reindeer. In the southern part of this middle region, scattered stands of dwarf Siberian pine and larch, a type of conifer, grow.
But the third part of the republic, below the tundra is where the vast taiga forests can be found. The taiga forests cover about 47 percent of Yakutia and almost 90 percent of that cover is larch.
The severity of the wildfires has gotten much worse
According to Live Science, Russian authorities described last year’s Siberian wildfires as “very severe” and estimated they caused the equivalent of 450 million tons (410 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide to be released throughout the whole season
However, this year the wildfires have released an equivalent of more than 505 million tons (460 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide, and the wildfire season isn’t over yet.
NASA estimated the cloud of smoke from the wildfires measured more than 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from east to west and 2,500 miles (4,000 km) from north to south. Moreover, the wildfire smoke traveled more than 3,000 km (1,864 mi) last week from Yakutia to reach the North Pole, a feat that appears to be a first in recorded history.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, last week ordered the government to loosen budget strings during the emergency. This week Putin ordered reinforcements to fight the Siberian fires and sent the head of the emergencies ministry to Yakutia to oversee the operations there.
In the vast and sparsely populated region blazes have so far burned through more than 9.2m hectares (22.7 million acres), an area the size of Portugal, according to Russia’s forestry agency.