For the first time in recorded history, hazy smoke from raging wildfires in the Arctic has reached the North Pole, and NASA satellites have the images to prove it.
On Aug. 6, the space agency’s MODIS, an imaging sensor on the Aqua satellite, captured true-color images of what NASA called a “vast, thick, and acrid blanket of smoke” that clouded the North Pole. The smoke originated from enormous blazes in the Siberian region of northern Russia.
According to China’s Xinhua news agency, the Mongolian capital city of Ulaanbaatar was blanketed in “white smoke,” NPR reported. The republic of Yakutia – home to Oymyakon, the coldest inhabited place on Earth – has also been shrouded in smoke, as captured by MODIS images on Aug. 8.
The thick smoke in Yakutia sent air quality measurements in recent weeks plummeting to an extreme category dubbed “airpocalypse,” a category described by officials to have “immediate and heavy effects on everybody,” The Guardian reported.
In the images captured on Aug. 6, that “airpocalypse” inducing smoke was shown to have traveled 1,864 miles from Yakutia to the North Pole, according to NASA.
“The smoke, which was so thick that most of the land below was obscured from view, stretches about 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from east to west and 2,500 miles (4,000 km) from south to north,” the agency wrote. “But it captures only a small part of the smoke from the Russian fires.”
To reach Ulaanbaatar on Aug. 4, NASA added that the smoke needed to have traveled more than 1,200 miles. From there, it appeared to waft over nearly the entire Arctic Circle, impacting Nunavut, Canada, and areas of western Greenland.
Wildfires have been burning in Siberia more frequently than ever before. While the total number of burned acreage is difficult to determine in the remote area, Russia’s weather monitoring institute, Rosgidromet, said this week that close to 8.4 million acres were burning and more than 34.5 million total acres have been destroyed this season, the second-worst on record. For comparison, during the 2020 California wildfire season, which was the worst on record, just under 4.4 million acres were burned.
According to Agence France-Presse, environmentalists blame Russian authorities for letting large areas of forest burn every year under a law that allows them not to intervene if the cost of intervention is greater than the cost of the damage they cause, or if they do not affect inhabited areas.
The fires in Siberia are bigger than this season’s wildfires in Greece, Turkey, Italy, the United States and Canada combined, Alexei Yaroshenko, a forestry expert with Greenpeace Russia, told The Washington Post.
He linked the worsening wildfires with the effects of climate change, as well as the “continuing decline of state forest management.”
The Yakutia region, or Sakha Republic, where the Siberian wildfires are mainly taking place is one of the most remote parts of Russia. The capital city, Yakutsk, recorded one of the coldest temperatures on Earth in February 1891, of minus 64.4 degrees Celsius (minus 83.9 degrees Fahrenheit); but the region saw record high temperatures this winter. This winter has set record high temperatures for the region. On August 2, the Siberian Times reported on the intense, blinding, smoke experienced by residents of Yakutia as wildfires scorched the land.
The Russian media seldom report on Siberian wildfires, he said, and so many people have no idea how much damage they inflict.
The Siberian Times reported in mid-July that residents were breathing smoke from more than 300 separate wildfires, but that only around half of the forest blazes were being tackled by firefighters — including paratroopers flown in by the Russian military — because the rest were thought to be too dangerous.
Siberian Times report read, “the Republic of Sakha, Russia’s largest territory, used to be known as the Kingdom of Permafrost, (now) is turning into the Capital of Wildfires”.
The wildfires have grown in size since then and have engulfed an estimated 62,300 square miles (161,300 square km) since the start of the year.
Zombie wildfires occur when ice and snow cover a flame, but don’t fully extinguish it. This phenomenon is common in the Arctic tundra, where carbon-rich peat can fuel smouldering flames all winter, Live Science previously reported. When the spring melt arrives, those underground embers can be rekindled, igniting new wildfires.
Last year, the wildfires in Siberia were described by the Russian authorities as “very severe” and estimated to have caused the equivalent of 450 million tons (410 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide to be released throughout the whole season; but this year the wildfires have released an equivalent of more than 505 million tons (460 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide, and the wildfire season isn’t over yet.
NASA estimated the cloud of smoke from the wildfires measured more than 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from east to west and 2,500 miles (4,000 km) from north to south. The Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that the smoke could be seen in the sky above Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia, more than 1,200 miles (2,000 km) away.
“For years, officials and opinion leaders have been saying that fires are normal, that the taiga is always burning, and there is no need to make an issue out of this. People are used to it,” Yaroshenko said.
In the United States, Americans have seen first-hand this year how wildfire smoke can travel thousands of miles. Fires currently burning in California and Montana have drastically impacted air quality levels in cities such as Denver, located over 1,000 miles away from California’s Dixie Fire.
Americans themselves have also been on the receiving end of Siberian wildfire smoke, including in 2019 when wind currents carried smoke across the Pacific Ocean and into Alaska and northwestern Canada. (Agencies)