To follow record heat and drought Hundreds of powerful wildfires are now igniting in northeastern Russia taiga forests In Siberia.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on Finnish nuclear power plant received this natural-colored image of large clouds of smoke surrounding the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) on July 5, 2021. Satellite data show that several small fires burned from time to time in the area for weeks, but several exploded in size in the last week of June.

According to Sakha’s Ministry of Emergency Situations, more than 250 fires burned in about 5,720 square kilometers (2,210 square kilometers) July 5 – about twice the size of Luxembourg. Although regional authorities report having extinguished dozens of fires a day, they call the situation “difficult” and are likely to fight major fires for weeks. Thick smoke has occasionally covered Yakutsk, the largest city in Sawmill (312,000 inhabitants), and other settlements in the region.

Another picture I got Medium resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, shows clearer floods from five major fires burning around Penzhina Bay (northwest of the Kamchatka Peninsula). The third picture, from Operational geographer (OLI) Landsat 8 shows a detailed picture of one fire on July 4th.

This is the second consecutive July when intense heat and forest fires have destroyed the area. In 2020, fires raged in much of July and August in Yakutia. Siberian wildlands also burned extensively in 2001, 2005 and 2013, according to the summary Siberian Fire Season 2020, written by researchers at George Mason University and Siberian Federal University. International Panel of Scientists recently published a study found that prolonged heat waves in Siberia in 2020 would have been “next to impossible” without the impact of man-made climate change.

Lauren Dauphin’s NASA Earth Observatory images using NASA’s EOSDIS MODIS data LANCE and GIBS / Worldview and Landsat data United States Geological Survey. The story of Adam Voiland.