Siberia is experiencing record high temperatures that are nearly 40 degrees Fahrenheit above average. To put things in perspective, The Washington Post writes that some areas are hotter than Washington right now. Snow cover is disappearing, sea ice is melting, and in 2020 fashion, we now have “zombie blazes” — really intense fires that are raging.
Just to show you how hot it’s been in some areas of Siberia, several stations in North Central Siberia recorded temperatures that climbed well into the 80s! That is south Louisiana temperatures. Khantanga, a town that is located north of the Arctic Circle, recorded 78 degrees Fahrenheit on Friday. The normal temperature is 32 degrees.
Image courtesy Berkeley Earth
Regarding those zombie fires, Russian officials are expecting that the summer will be the hottest the region has ever seen. They think there will be an unusually destructive fire season — last year, the fires burned 7 million acres of Siberian forests. So far this year, 1.5 million acres have burned.
Regarding the sea ice melting in the Kara Sea, Labe noted that it recently reached a record […]
Zombie fires burning over-winter in the tundra to erupt anew in the spring is probably something that was over-looked by earlier climate modelers.
Imagine an arctic that never stops burning.