By Nick Paton Walsh and Natalie Gallón 26 August 2019 Porto Velho, Brazil (CNN) – The smoke is so thick, at times the Cessna airplane had to climb to stay out of it. At times your eyes burn and you close the air vents to keep the cabin habitable. Sometimes it is so bad, it […]
By Andrew Freedman 22 August 2019 (The Washington Post) – The wildfires burning in the Amazon have the potential to release vast quantities of long-stored carbon — thereby accelerating climate change and cause permanent harm to the planet’s most biodiverse ecosystems. A fleet of public and private-sector satellites are keeping tabs on deforestation rates in […]
By Douglas I. Kelley, Ioannis Bistinas, Rhys Whitley, Chantelle Burton, Toby R. Marthews, and Ning Dong 19 August 2019 (Nature Climate Change) – Anthropogenically driven declines in tropical savannah burnt area1,2 have recently received attention due to their effect on trends in global burnt area3,4. Large-scale trends in ecosystems where vegetation has adapted to infrequent fire, […]
24 August 2019 (AFP) – Hundreds of new fires are raging in the Amazon rainforest in northern Brazil, official data showed Saturday, amid growing international pressure on President Jair Bolsonaro to control the worst blazes in years. Multiple fires were seen across a vast area of the northwestern state of Rondonia on Friday when AFP […]
14 August 2019 (The Siberian Times) – Territory covered with wildfires across Russia has reached its peak for the year so far, with some 5.4 million hectares ablaze mostly in Siberia and the country’s far east. The total land destroyed by flames will soon exceed 2018 with weeks of the burning season still to go. […]
By Svetlana Skarbo 1 August 2019 (The Siberian Times) – Predators seek food in villages all around Siberia as climate expert warns of worse fires each year due to soaring rise in temperatures, 10°C above average. Wild animals are turning to humans as they escape gas-chamber-like woods, with wildfires continuing to rage across almost 3 […]
11 August 2019 (Twitter) – This satellite view shows more than 5 million km² of Siberia covered by smoke from wildfires on 11 August 2019. For comparison, the area of the EU is about 4.5 million km², and the area of contiguous U.S. about 8.1 million km². Satellite image: MODIS / Terra. Graphic: Antti Lipponen […]
By Kasha Patel 1 August 2019 (NASA) – In June and July 2019, more than 100 long-lived and intense wildfires blazed within the Arctic Circle. Most of them burned in Alaska and Siberia, though a few raged even in Greenland. As these fires lofted thick plumes of smoke into the skies, they also launched megatons of tiny, harmful particles into the […]
9 August 2019 (The Siberian Times) – Residents of sub-Arctic Verkhoyansk district of Yakutia woke up in complete darkness. There was no trace of light until after 8am local time over the Verkhoyansk district in the north of Yakutia. Almost exactly a year ago – in July 2018 – there was another pitch black morning […]
By Christopher C. Burt 9 August 2019 (Weather Underground) – July 2019 was the warmest month on record for the state of Alaska, smashing the previous record by almost one full degree Fahrenheit and leaving numerous local records for hottest day and warmest month in the superheated dust. Records for statewide average temperatures date back […]