Fire smoke from Siberia has reached the North Pole

This means that smoke from the fire has moved more than 300 km from its source in Siberian Sacha, which according to NASA is “the first time in documented history.”

And the situation in southern Sacha Republic, Russia’s largest republic on the surface, continues to deteriorate, according to the country’s meteorological service Rosgidromet.

Record high temperatures and constant drought are fanning the fire. At present, approximately 34,000 square kilometers of forest are on fire. By comparison, the Dixie Fire, the second largest in the history of California, USA, currently covers 1,870 square kilometers.

In total, this year’s forest fires in Russia have destroyed 140,000 square kilometers, making this year the second worst year since the turn of the millennium. Last week, the European Union’s Copernicus Environmental Monitoring Program announced that fires in northwest Russia have released more than 505 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent since June – well above last year’s record of 450 million tons, although several remain. weeks of the fire season.

Forest fires are a naturally occurring phenomenon during the hot Siberian summers, but their breadth and intensity have increased sharply in recent years, raising fears of thawing permafrost and the release of large amounts of greenhouse gases from the frozen tundra.