‘Impossible' Arctic Wildfires Emerged Due to Global Warming

The Arctic Circle is one of the areas most affected by climate change. A new study revealed how 'impossible' wildfires in Siberia have emerged from human activities causing global warming.

This year, Russia recorded its warmest January in history with temperatures reaching 9.4 degrees Celcius. The Fobos weather center shared, 'For the first time, the average temperature was above zero [degrees Celsius] in Moscow and St. Petersburg.'

‘Impossible' Arctic Wildfires Emerged Due to Global Warming — Downloaded From Getty Images official website

Temperatures remained above 5 degrees Celsius up until June. Scientists described that the current heat 'has contributed to raising the world's average temperature to the second hottest on record for the period January to May.'

On June 20, the temperature in the town of Verkhoyansk was a record-breaking 38C. This heatwave would have been impossible without global warming as scientists believe that the Arctic is warming up twice as fast as the global average.

A team of international climate scientists discovered that temperatures that warm would occur less than once every 80,000 years if humans didn't cause climate change. They described the heatwave as 'unequivocal evidence of the impact of climate change on the planet.'

'Extreme Climate Events'

Professor Peter Stott from Met Office in the UK, where they forecast local weather, said that this is the strongest result of any attribution study. Attribution studies focus on individual environment events as scientists look at how climate change has caused the event to become stronger or more likely to occur.

Stott had once explained the importance of climate change impacting circulation patterns in the atmosphere. 'We'd be failing in our mission to society if we didn't consider both dynamic and thermodynamic effects, given it is both that influence the probability and magnitude of extreme climate events.'

In the new study, the team used computer simulations to compare the difference between today's climate and what it would have been without human-induced global warming. The drastic changes in the Arctic are affecting places such as the UK.

The UK's weather conditions are influenced by four out of six systems in the Arctic. Dr. Katharin Hendry from Bristol University described several extreme weather events that have altered the Arctic such as the winter of 2018, known as the 'Beast from the East.'

At the time, Artic winds had blasted all the way to the UK where temperatures were below 0 degrees Celcius for days. Heavy snowfall in some areas piled up as high as half a meter. $1.2 billion of damage was incurred and 10 people were killed during the harsh winter.

Professor Stott said, 'The link between the Arctic and UK weather is through the jet stream,' referring to fast-moving air within the atmosphere. The jet streams move weather systems around the earth.

Arctic Wildfires

Sometimes, blocking patterns occur causing one weather system to stay in one location temporarily. This year, a blocking pattern caused the UK to experience more sun during the springtime than usual.

The same pattern caused a heatwave in Siberia with tragic Arctic wildfires. The massive fuel spill in May was followed by the release of about 56 megatons of carbon dioxide in June.

Simultaneously, permafrost was melting at rapid rates while Siberian silk moths arrived in unusually large swarms. Damaged trees by the moths had made them more vulnerable to wildfires.

Dr. Hendry concluded, 'Looking at the geological record, we don't think we've had CO2 levels as high for about five million years. So we really don't know what to expect in the future. We are in uncharted territory.