It’s a hell of a summer in Siberia’s coldest region. Since May, the Sakha Republic has been forced to endure caustic smoke from wildfires consuming the vast Tiaga forests and bogs of carbon-rich peat. Close to one million people are affected, and the wildfire season continues for another two months before winter sets in and the smoke comes to a halt. The fires so far have burned an area the approximate size of Ohio.
The peat fires are now referred to as zombie fires. The fires during the winter smolder and resurface the following spring, again billowing even more carbon into the atmosphere. This is called a feedback loop; the underground fires will reignite the incineration of the vast boreal forests.
The explosion of fires is a result of a blistering heatwave in Siberia. The smoke has covered the Arctic ocean over the North Pole. That smoke will combine with the fires in western North America and be over Canada and the United States by the end of this week.
The fires are so widespread in Siberia half of them are not even being fought.
From The Guardian on the “Airpocalypse” in Siberia:
A heatwave in one of the world’s coldest regions has sparked forest fires and threatened the Siberian city of Yakutsk with an “airpocalypse” of thick toxic smoke, atmospheric monitoring services have reported.
High levels of particulate matter and possibly also chemicals including ozone, benzene and hydrogen cyanide are thought likely to make this one of the world’s worst ever air pollution events.
Local authorities have warned the 320,000 residents to stay indoors to avoid choking fumes from the blazes, which are on course to break last year’s record.
Satellite analysts say regional levels of PM2.5 – small particles that can enter the bloodstream and damage human organs – have surged beyond 1,000 micrograms a cubic metre in recent days, which is more than 40 times the recommended safe guideline of the World Health Organization.
On Tuesday, live air quality monitors for Yakutsk measured PM 2.5 levels of 395 micrograms. This fell into the extreme category of “airpocalypse”, which is defined as “immediate and heavy effects on everybody”. Russian social media accounts have shown images of readings that are more than 17 times worse than the average in even the most polluted cities of India and China.
This is not snow in the below clip but ash.
Wildlife has nowhere to go.
Meanwhile, a new source of methane has been found in Siberia because of the heatwaves.
The Siberian heatwave of 2020 led to new methane emissions from the permafrost, according to research. Emissions of the potent greenhouse gas are currently small, the scientists said, but further research is urgently needed.
Analysis of satellite data indicated that fossil methane gas leaked from rock formations known to be large hydrocarbon reservoirs after the heatwave, which peaked at 6C above normal temperatures. Previous observations of leaks have been from permafrost soil or under shallow seas.
Prof Nikolaus Froitzheim, at Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn, Germany, and who led the Siberian research, said: “We observed a significant increase in methane concentration starting last summer. This remained over the winter, so there must have been a steady steady flow of methane from the ground.
“At the moment, these anomalies are not of a very big magnitude, but it shows there is something going on that was not observed before and the carbon stock [of fossil gas] is large.
“We don’t know how dangerous [methane releases] are, because we don’t know how fast the gas can be released. It’s very important to know more about it,” Froitzheim said. If, at some point in the future, large global temperature rises lead to a big volume being released, “this methane would be the difference between catastrophe and apocalypse.”
Methane releases have been considered a possible climate tipping point, in which emissions of the gas cause further warming, which in turn drives even more releases.
“permafrost thaw does not only release microbial methane from formerly frozen soils but also, and potentially in much higher amounts, [fossil] methane from reservoirs below. As a result, the permafrost–methane feedback may be much more dangerous than suggested by studies accounting for microbial methane alone.”
There are no borders in a climate crisis.
Groups From the Go Green Academy
These organizations have greatly contributed to the global green movement. They facilitate the conditions under which humans and nature can co-exist, while still satisfying the social, economic and environmental needs of present and future generations.
- 350.org
- Alternative Energy News
- Audubon Society
- Conservation International
- The Daily Green
- Earth Teaching
- Earth911
- Energy Tomorrow
- Environmental Graffiti
- Environmental Protection Agency
- Environmental Working Group
- Greenpeace
- Grist
- Green
- Mother Earth News
- Mother Nature Network
- Nature Conservancy
- Sierra Club
- Treehugger
- World Wildlife Fund