Siberia wildfires worsen as smoke reaches North Pole
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Vehicles driving on a road covered in smoke from nearby forest fires in Siberia's Sakha region last month. Russia's weather institute said this week that the region's situation "continues to deteriorate".
PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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MOSCOW • A Russian weather monitor has said forest fires ravaging Siberia are worsening, as Nasa satellite images showed smoke from its burning forests reaching the North Pole.
Devastating forest fires have ripped across Siberia with increasing regularity over the past few years, which Russia's weather officials and environmentalists have linked to climate change and an underfunded forest service.
United Nations climate experts on Monday published a report showing unequivocally that global warming is unfolding more quickly than feared and that humanity is almost entirely to blame.
One of Siberia's hardest-hit regions this year has been Yakutia - Russia's largest and coldest region that sits atop permafrost - which has seen record-high temperatures and drought.
Russia's weather monitoring institute Rosgidromet said on Monday that the situation in the region - also known as Sakha - "continues to deteriorate".
According to the institute, close to 3.4 million hectares are burning in the region, including areas that are "difficult to access and remote".
Last Saturday, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration said its satellite images showed wildfire smoke travelling "more than 3,000km from Yakutia to reach the North Pole", calling it "a first in recorded history".
Environmentalists blame the authorities for letting large areas burn every year under a law that allows them not to intervene if the cost of fighting fires is greater than the damage caused or if they do not affect inhabited areas.
According to Russia's forestry agency, this year's fires have ravaged over 14 million hectares.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
