Fires ravage central Russia, killing at least 8

By Maxim Tkachenko, CNNSeptember 3, 2010 11:36 a.m. EDT Moscow, Russia (CNN) — Fires left at least eight people dead and hundreds homeless in three regions of central Russia, government officials said Friday. The regions of Volgograd, Saratov and Samara — all along the Volga River in central Russia — have been hit by forest […]

Peruvian Amazon at lowest level in over 40 years

Lima (AFP) Sept 1, 2010 – The Amazon, the world’s biggest river, is at its lowest level in over 40 years near its source in northeastern Peru, causing havoc in a region where it is used as the only form of travel, authorities said. According to officials in Loreto province, the Amazon on Tuesday in […]

Russia environmentalists visit radioactive forests threatened by fires

By Vladimir Slivyak, 21 August 2010; translated by Maria Kaminskaya MOSCOW – Last Wednesday, August 18, a group of journalists and environmentalists joined representatives of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations (MChS) to visit Bryansk – a region in Central European Russia where wildfires threatened to spread into areas affected by the 1986 Chernobyl fallout, […]

Graph of the Day: Areas of the Lower 48 States With Hot Daily Low Temperatures, 1910–2008

This chart shows the percentage of the land area of the lower 48 states with summer daily low temperatures well above normal. The bars represent individual years, while the line is a smoothed nine-year moving average. Heat waves occurred with high frequency in the 1930s, and these remain the most severe heat waves in the […]

Russian forest fires pose major threat to bats

Bonn (Germany), 18 August 2010 – The catastrophic wildfires that have swept across Russia this summer have killed at least 50 people and could cost the country’s economy an estimated US$15 billion. But among the hidden victims of the fires are small, nocturnal animals that are fast losing their habitats. Russia’s bat population – which […]

Heat probably killed thousands in Moscow

By Dmitry SolovyovTue Aug 17, 2010 10:50am EDT MOSCOW (Reuters) – Several thousand Muscovites are thought to have died in July alone from this year’s unprecedented heatwave and August could add more fatalities to the grim statistics, a Russian scientist said on Tuesday. Moscow, a metropolis of over 10 million people, suffered from intense heat […]

Image of the Day: Smoke and Fires Across Western Russia, 15 August 2010

A veil of gray shrouds western Russia as plumes of thick smoke pour from numerous fires blazing in the region on August 15, 2010, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra satellite captured true-color images as the satellite passed overhead. Two images have been merged to illustrate the expanse of the fires […]

Poisonous smog returns to Moscow

  15 August 2010 MOSCOW (AP) — The poisonous smog that contributed to a higher death rate in Moscow last week returned to Russia’s capital Sunday, officials said. The concentration of carbon monoxide in Moscow air early Sunday was more than five times what is considered normal, said Alexey Popikov of weather monitors Mosecomonitoring. In […]

NASA satellites register 368 wildfires in Russia

MOSCOW, August 14 (RIA Novosti) Two NASA satellites registered a total of 368 hotspots from fires across Russia on Saturday, with the central part of the country being the worst affected, a spokeswoman for the ScanEx company said. “Wildfires raging on vast areas and smoke blankets can be clearly seen even on satellite photos of […]

WMO: Unprecedented sequence of extreme weather events is consistent with climate change

Last updated: 11 August 2010 Several regions of the world are currently coping with severe weather-related events: flash floods and widespread flooding in large parts of Asia and parts of Central Europe while other regions are also affected: by heatwave and drought in Russian Federation, mudslides in China and severe droughts in sub-Saharan Africa. While […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial