Smoke from wildfires in Siberia covers the North Pole
In Yakutia, in northeastern Russia, about a hundred forest fires are raging at the same time. There, because of the strong wind, the fire spreads the fastest, which makes the situation the most difficult of all Russian regions - houses are burning and the authorities are evacuating residents, writes the Norwegian edition of Dagbladet.
Thick gray smoke rises from these conflagrations, covering the sky, leaving only areas of the taiga burned to ashes on the ground. NASA has documented a historical phenomenon - the smoke from forest fires in Siberia covered the North Pole, located 3 thousand km from this area.
On August 9, Roshydromet reported that the situation was very difficult. The reason is drought and record high air temperatures in permafrost regions. In 2021, fire has already destroyed more than 14 million hectares of forest, with about 3 million hectares in recent days. This is the second most severe forest fire season in the Russian Federation since 2000.
On the same day, after a seven-year hiatus, the alarming UN climate report appeared. Scientists have concluded that the responsibility for climate change lies with people and their activities. In most parts of the world, extreme weather is now much more common than it used to be. The type of extreme weather varies by location. Somewhere it is a drought, and elsewhere, on the contrary, an excessive abundance of precipitation.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change believes that everything depends on global emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere. Several scenarios are considered in the document that explain what will happen with a large or moderate reduction in emissions and if emissions remain at current levels.
Dagbladet suggested that, most likely, global warming will still exceed the estimated figure of 1,5 degrees. Moreover, even if emissions are sharply reduced, there is a high probability that global warming will reach 1,6 degrees by 2050, i.e. the process will go faster than the said Intergovernmental Group suggests.
In turn, on August 10, the agency Sputnik Kazakhstan, referring to Kazhydromet, informed the public that the excess of harmful substances in the air was recorded in Ust-Kamenogorsk.
Kazakh forecasters explained that in the first ten days of August, a cyclone was observed over Western Siberia, which helped to transfer air masses from Yakutia.
Subsequently, the plume of a smoke screen from forest fires gradually spread to the northeastern regions of Kazakhstan, where local steppe fires (in the East Kazakhstan region) additionally contributed to the deterioration of the quality of atmospheric air.
- emphasized in the communique.
According to Kazhydromet, in Ust-Kamenogorsk, the maximum permissible concentration (MPC) in the air was exceeded: for nitrogen dioxide up to 2,1 MPC, for sulfur dioxide up to 9 MPC, for hydrogen sulfide up to 5,0 MPC.
According to the forecast, heavy rains are expected on August 12-13 in some regions of Kazakhstan, with thunderstorms and gusty winds. A gradual decrease in air temperature will begin at night to 10-18 degrees Celsius and in the daytime to 15-23 degrees Celsius, i.e. the weather will help diffuse pollutants and reduce their concentration.
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