PARIS, July 16, 2024 (AFP) – Extreme wildfires are spreading across Russia and North America and shrouding swathes of the region in smoke, the EU’s climate monitor said Tuesday as it warned of worse to come.
Copernicus said unusually hot and dry conditions were causing blazes in Siberia, Canada and Alaska and a “remarkable intensification” of planet-heating gases as swathes of forest burn.
A column of smoke containing ash and harmful particles from wildfires in eastern Russia had drifted 3,000 kilometres (1860 miles) across parts of eastern Mongolia, northeastern China and northern Japan.
The “anomalously high” levels of some airborne pollutants over that region were many times globally accepted safe limits, said the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS).
Parts of Canada were on evacuation alert as flames ripped through western provinces, while nearly 250,0000 hectares in Alaska had been torched this year in an early start to the wildfire season.
“The current wildfires are already at record levels in some regions and with the second half of the summer still to come, more extreme fire emissions are anticipated, and we will be closely monitoring how they develop and how they impact air quality,” said CAMS senior scientist Mark Parrington.
Wildfire smoke contains fine airborne particles that can lodge deep in the lungs when inhaled and are harmful to human health.
Mostly caused by lightning strikes, wildfires are part of the natural cycle of boreal forests, which circle the far northern hemisphere and are dense, remote and difficult to access.
So-called “zombie fires” can smoulder beneath the surface during winter months, surviving on carbon-rich fuels before reigniting at the onset of spring or summer.
But this region is also warming quickly and forests there “have experienced a significant increase in the number and intensity of wildfires over the last two decades”, Copernicus said.
Scientists have described increasing wildfires in famously frosty Siberia as a clear signal that Earth’s natural systems are being fundamentally altered by global warming.
These fires have a direct impact on global warming, razing forests that store carbon and pumping enormous volumes of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The smoke can also settle on ice, reducing its ability to reflect solar radiation, and causing more heat to be absorbed.
As of July 15, carbon emissions from wildfires in Russia had already exceeded the June-July total estimated for the previous two years, Copernicus said.
This was particularly acute in the eastern Amur oblast, where emissions since June 1 from fires there had already doubled the previous record for the same period.