Siberian Wildfires Produce 800 Megatons of Carbon Dioxide in Less Than 3 Months

Satellite images show the extent to which wildfires in Siberia are damaging the region. Sadly, it is not only the forests that are affected, as the European Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) estimated that greenhouse gas emissions from Siberian wildfires have doubled since last year.

According to Space.com, wildfires in Siberia exceeded the annual carbon emissions of Germany in just two and a half months since June this year. As per Climate Trade, Germany holds the record as the sixth worst polluter in the world.

Scientists are monitoring the wildfires via satellite to see the damage it has caused to the sparsely populated northeastern Russia.

NASA Tracks Wildfires in Siberia

Siberia is having a difficult year so far, with drastic wildfires burning large swaths of forests since June. CNet reported that land surface temperature in Siberia has reached a reading of 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius), and many parts of Russia were on fire.

Moreover, NASA recently released satellite images of the Sakha Republic showing huge swaths of wildfires burning through the sub-Arctic forests. More than 250 fires were burning across roughly 2,210 square miles (5,720 square kilometers), which is twice the size of Luxembourg. One image shows a blanket of smoke in July near the city of Yakutsk.

"Satellite data indicate that several small fires burned intermittently in the area for weeks, but several exploded in size during the last week of June," NASA said.

Another image also shows the advancement of the fire in the forest and a large dark burn scar. Satellite photographs of the Siberian wildfire show an uncanny resemblance with those from past years, such as the 2019 Siberian wildfire, which spewed smoke beyond Russian territory.

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Wildfires in Siberia Emitted More Carbon Dioxide This Year

According to Space.com, CAMS estimated that the wildfires in Siberia since June of this year have emitted 800 megatons of carbon dioxide in just two and a half months.

CAMS senior scientist Mark Parrington told Space.com in an email that the transport of smoke across the Arctic Circle is not unusual, but the large amount of plumes reaching the North Pole and North America is reflecting an unusual scale and persistence of fires this summer.

CAMS expects that some of the plume's soot will settle in the Arctic Circle, aggravating ice sheet melting by raining down on unstable sea ice. Additionally, it will alter the albedo or reflectiveness of the ice to reflect solar radiation. Instead, it will absorb and accelerate the melting.

Federico Fierli, an atmospheric composition expert at the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), said that wildfires in Siberia are increasing in size and intensity like many wildfires across the globe. It is becoming clear year after year that the increasing scale of fires has become the norm rather than the exception, which is a deeply concerning trend.

The good news, though, some of the active fires might be easing off now based on the latest satellite images from Europe's Sentinel satellites.