Due to the abnormal winter, according to forecasts, the taiga will burn even more than last year.
Last year's catastrophic fires in Siberia may be repeated. And turn out to be even more disastrous. The international business publication Bloomberg warns about this.
Journalists remind that last year fires in Siberia covered an area the size of Greece. And now in Russia with the weather - it is generally not clear what. The winter was unusually warm, and in some regions the spring brought abnormal heat. In some areas beyond the Arctic Circle, the temperature turned out to be as much as 16 degrees above normal. This is very bad for the northern forests - everything dries up there. Since there is little rain, in some places the fires began in March. In May, the number of such centers only increased.
And this scares Western scientists - the season of forest fires in a huge sparsely populated area is too long. Which can lead to unpredictable consequences.
The concern in the West, in particular, is caused by taiga peatlands, where fires release huge reserves of carbon accumulated thousands of years ago.
Christina Santin Nuno, professor at Swansea University (UK), told Bloomberg that such emissions, of course, affect the entire planet.
The problems today are not only with the Siberian taiga. In the last year, what has not been burning: the wilds of the Amazon, Indonesia, Australia … Billions of tons of additional greenhouse gases.
However, based on the map published by Bloomberg, it turns out that the most serious situation in connection with global warming is in Russia. The map shows the average temperature rise in April 2020 over the average temperatures of the same month in 1981-2010. Most of Russia, including the very north, is painted over with the most intense color - the difference is over 5 degrees.
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The forecasts and opinions of domestic experts on this matter are contradictory. Specialists of the All-Russian Research Institute for Civil Defense and Emergencies are really afraid this year of an increase in the number of fires in the Far East and Siberia. Moreover, throughout the summer - from June to August.
Meanwhile, the scientific director of the Hydrometeorological Center, Roman Vilfand, claims that it is not so steeply warmer from year to year. In the north of Russia, the average annual air temperature rises by 0.6-0.8 degrees every ten years, in the center of the country - by 0.4 degrees, and in Western Siberia, almost or not at all. Although he does not deny that this year there may be serious problems with fires.
ELENA ODINTSOVA