Forest fires in the boreal forests of the northern hemisphere in 2019

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The forest fires in the boreal forests of the northern hemisphere were large-scale forest fires that broke out in 2019 in Canada , Alaska , Greenland and, to a large extent, in eastern Russia . At the end of July, more than three million hectares had already been burned in Siberia alone . According to Greenpeace, 13.4 million hectares of forest burned down during forest fires in the northern hemisphere.

The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service  (CAMS) reported that more than 100 forest fires had been registered within the Arctic Circle since the beginning of June .

Russia

Location of the boreal coniferous forests with subdivision

By early August, the fires in Siberia had destroyed three million hectares of forest. The Sakha Republic and the Krasnoyarsk Territory were badly affected ; both are in Siberia .

The economic damage to the taiga so far has been estimated at 2.4 billion rubles (33 million euros). According to the Russian forest authorities, there were 121 settlements in the immediately affected zone at the beginning of August 2019, and a total of 800 locations in Russia and Kazakhstan have been affected so far . According to Greenpeace , more than 13.4 million hectares of forest have been destroyed since the beginning of the year.

At the end of September, the authorities announced that all forest fires in Siberia had been extinguished. In 2020, the forest fires in Siberia began in early May, helped by record temperatures in April, and burned unusually high in the north in July.

Canada

The Canadian province of Alberta experienced the highest number of forest fires in 40 years. In the north of the province, 15,000 people from 20 communities were evacuated due to the fire.

Causes and effects

The cause of the abnormal warmth and drought is an excessively strongly oscillating jet stream in the northern hemisphere. This shift of the polar front leads to a strong exchange of heat from the tropics to the polar regions. In addition, both June and July 2019 were the warmest such months ever recorded globally (July together with that of 2016; analyzes began in the 1980s).

The heat released by the fires near the Arctic Circle accelerates the thawing of permafrost soils . These store large amounts of frozen biomass ; when thawing, they release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere . These in turn accelerate global warming . The extent of this “vicious circle” in relation to man-made climate change is still unclear.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Forest fires in the Arctic are reaching unprecedented proportions. In: Der Standard online, July 25, 2019.
  2. ^ Fires in Eastern Russia. The ignored disaster on July 30, 2019 on tagesschau.de
  3. ↑ a b 13.4 million hectares of forest destroyed. In: schweizerbauer.ch . August 12, 2019, accessed August 12, 2019 .
  4. ↑ a b Fire: Arctic is burning! Fires accelerate global warming. wetter.at, July 16, 2019.
  5. ↑ Wildfires Have Cost Russia $ 100M in 2019, Forestry Authority Says. In: The Moscow Times. August 22, 2019, accessed on August 26, 2019 .
  6. ^ A b Forest fires in Siberia: three million hectares of forest burned down. In: time online. August 3, 2019, accessed August 6, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Forest fires in Russia - Fires in Siberia extinguished after months. In: srf.ch . September 30, 2019, accessed September 30, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Elizabeth Claire Alberts: Siberia experiences hottest spring on record, fueling wildfires. In: Mongabay. May 19, 2020, accessed May 30, 2020 (American English).
  9. ↑ Heat wave in Russia. Forest fires in Siberia spread on June 27, 2020 on tagesschau.de, accessed on June 28, 2020
  10. ↑ Madeleine Stone: A heat wave thawed Siberia's tundra. Now, it's on fire. In: National Geographic. July 6, 2020, accessed on July 9, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Jordan Omstead: Massive wildfire season has Alberta seeking review of prevention, response strategies. In: CBC. www.cbc.ca, July 29, 2019, accessed on August 26, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Europe - (meteorologically) divided into two parts. DWD: Topic of the day , August 11, 2019.
  13. ↑ Earth experienced warmest June on record; and July matched, and maybe broke, the record for the hottest month since analysis began. In: World Meteorological Association: Press: News , July 19th resp. August 1, 2019.
  14. ↑ Jonathan Watts Global environment editor: Arctic wildfires spew soot and smoke cloud bigger than EU . In: The Guardian . August 12, 2019, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed August 13, 2019]).