When April is the New July: Siberia’s Epic Wildfires Come Far Too Early
What we are currently witnessing is something that should never happen — an outbreak of fires with summer intensity during late April at a time when Siberia should still be frigid and frozen
(NASA
LANCE MODIS Rapid Fire hotspot analysis of extreme fire outbreak in
the Amur region of Russia on April 28, 2014. In this shot, the Amur
runs west to east through the frame. To the right is the Pacific
Ocean [off frame] to the left is a corner of Russia’s massive Lake
Baikal. The red spots indicate currently active fires. Image
source: LANCE-MODIS)
28
April, 2014.
*
* * * *
Last
year, during late July and early August, a series of epic wildfires
raged to the north and west of Russia’s far eastern Amur
region. About
a week later, the skies opened up in a ten-day-long deluge that
pushed the Amur River bordering Russia and China to levels not seen
in the entire 150 year span of record-keeping for the region.
Whole cities were submerged as the Amur leapt its banks to form a
kind of massive inland sea.
The
floods promoted strong growth in the region, penetrating permafrost
zones to enhance melt, providing major fuel sources for fires should
they re-emerge. Come winter, a persistent warm ridge pattern in the
Jet Stream transported hotter than usual air over this region. The
winter was far, far warmer than it should have been. And when spring
came, it came like the onset of summer.
Last
week, temperatures soared into the 70s and ever since the beginning
of April, freakishly large fires for so early in the burn season
erupted. By April 23rd, the
Russian fire ministry had logged nearly 3,000 fires. The
outbreak was so intense that, just a few days ago, more than 5,000
pieces of heavy equipment and an army of firefighters were engaged
throughout a large stretch of Russia from the still frozen shores of
Lake Baikal to the far eastern Amur region.
But
last night’s LANCE-MODIS satellite pass brought with it unexpected
new horrors:
(Two
massive wildfires in excess of 200 square miles burning in the Amur
region of Russia on April 28, 2014. Image source: LANCE-MODIS.)
Two
massive burn scars devouring huge sections of land in the Amur region
of Russia.
For
scale, the ribbon of blue traveling north to south beneath the first
massive fire is a mile-wide tributary to the Amur river called the
Zeya. Using the scale provided by LANCE MODIS, we see that the fire
at upper left is currently about 15 x 18 miles (270 square miles) in
area and that the fire at lower right is about 23 x 20 miles (460
square miles) in area.
Even
during Russia’s recent global warming-spurred epic fire seasons of
2010 to 2013 fires of this scope and obvious visible intensity didn’t
come up in the satellite imagery until the most intense periods of
summer heating during late June through early August. Today, we have
monster fires comparable to those which burned during Russia’s
worst ever recorded fire seasons, at their height, burning next to
snow covered regions in late April.
As
a last reference, look at the snow covered mountainous ridge in the
far lower right corner of the above image. That swatch of crystalline
white — yes, it’s a ridge of snow-covered mountains apparently
being dwarfed by the massive fire burning just above it. Beneath this
mountain range is what appears to be a ‘small’ plume of smoke.
It’s worth noting that this smoke plume issues from a recently
burned region covering fully 15 square miles. By comparison, the
fires above each cover areas comparable to Guam, half of Rhode
Island, or
the massive ice island recently broken off from the now doomed Pine
Island Glacier (PIG) — B31.
Unfortunately,
these massive fires aren’t the only blazes covering extraordinary
swaths of Russian land during late April. Moving west to the shores
of the still partly frozen Lake Baikal, we find numerous fires
burning beneath a sea of smoke in the lowlands between two, still
snow-capped highlands.
The
entire roughly 200 x 200 mile (40,000 square mile) region is covered
by the steely gray smoke of previous and ongoing blazes.
Peering down through the dense shroud, we see numerous thick smoke
plumes issuing from still out of control fires. The freakish
prematurity of these blazes is readily apparent in the visible ice
still covering much of Lake Baikal and also in the snow still
doggedly clinging to the nearby mountainous highlands.
A
vicious combination of thawing permafrost, a rapid increase in
average temperatures throughout Siberia and driven by human warming,
and the vulnerability of the active soil layer and related vegetation
to rapid drying appears to be turning this region into an ever more
explosive fire trap. Risk of wildfire is dependent on both heat and
fuel. But with the permafrost containing an almost inexhaustible
layer of either drying peat or venting methane and with temperatures
now rising at twice the already rapid global rate, the potential for
burning in or near the violatile permafrost thaw zone may well be
practically unlimited.
These
extraordinary and anomalous conditions, combined with a very intense
early season warming, what appears to be a persistent and developing
heat dome over Eastern Russia and adjacent Arctic Siberia, a very
rapidly receding snow line, and, potentially, an amplifying effect
from an emerging El Nino in the Pacific, results in a very high
continued risk for both extreme and record fires throughout the
spring and summer of 2014.
Links:
Hat
tip to Colorado Bob
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