The Arctic is on fire: record heat has been recorded in Siberia, which at times increases the pace of global warming

On Saturday, June 20, in the Russian Arctic city of Verkhoyansk, the thermometer reached a record high of 38 degrees Celsius (100,4 degrees Fahrenheit). This temperature is high enough for anywhere in the world, but it is Siberia, and it is known for being frozen. The World Meteorological Organization has stated that it is checking temperature readings that were unprecedented for the region north of the Arctic Circle. Writes about this Fox News.

Photo: Shutterstock

“The Arctic is figuratively and literally on fire—it's warming much faster than we thought it would in response to rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and that warming is leading to rapid melting and more fires,” said the expert. Climate from the University of Michigan Jonathan Overpeck.

“Record warming in Siberia is a warning sign of significant magnitude,” Overpeck said.

Most of Siberia already had high temperatures in 2020, which were atypical for this region. From January to May, the average temperature in the north-central part of Siberia was about 8 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) above average.

"This is much, much warmer than we've ever seen in this region," said Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather.

Siberia is listed in the Guinness Book of Records for extreme temperatures. This is the place where the thermometer moves 106 degrees Celsius (190 degrees Fahrenheit) from a minimum of minus 68 degrees Celsius (minus 90 Fahrenheit) to 38 degrees Celsius (100,4 Fahrenheit).

On the subject: Winters are getting shorter and summers are getting hotter: how global warming is changing seasonality

For residents of the Sakha Republic in the Russian Arctic, a heat wave is not necessarily a bad thing. Vasilisa Ivanova spent every day this week with her family, swimming and sunbathing.

“We spent the whole day on the banks of the Lena River,” said Ivanova, who lives in the village of Zhigansk, 270 miles from where the heat record was set. “We came to swim every day.”

But for scientists, “this is a worrying sign,” Overpeck wrote.

Such prolonged Siberian warmth has not been observed for millennia, and “this is another sign that the Arctic is increasing global warming even more than we thought,” Overpeck said. The Arctic regions of Russia have one of the fastest warming rates in the world.

Temperatures on Earth have risen an average of 0,18 degrees Celsius (almost a third of a degree Fahrenheit) every 10 years over the past few decades. But in Russia it is increasing by 0,47 degrees Celsius (0,85 degrees Fahrenheit) and in the Russian Arctic by 0,69 degrees Celsius (1,24 degrees Fahrenheit) every ten years, said Andrei Kiselev, presenter scientist from the Moscow Main Geophysical Observatory named after. Voeykova.

“In this regard, we are ahead of the entire planet,” Kiselev said.

Rising temperatures in Siberia have been linked to long-running forest fires that are getting worse every year and thawing permafrost - a huge problem because buildings and pipelines are built on top of it. Thawing permafrost also releases more heat-trapping gas and dries out the soil, making fires worse, says Vladimir Romanovsky, who studies permafrost at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“In this case, it’s even more serious because the previous winter was unusually warm,” Romanovsky said. According to Romanovsky, the permafrost thaws, the ice melts, the soil dries out, and this can create a feedback loop that worsens the thawing of permafrost, and “cold winters cannot stop it.”

The catastrophic oil spill from a destroyed reservoir last month near the Arctic city of Norilsk was partially guilty of thawing permafrost. In 2011, part of a residential building in Yakutsk, the largest city in the Republic of Sakha, collapsed due to thawing and subsidence of the soil.

According to Greenpeace, in August 2019, more than 4 million hectares of forests in Siberia burned. This year, fires started much earlier than usual, in early July, said Vladimir Chuprov, director of the Greenpeace Russia project department.

On the subject: Business to save the planet: how to make money to fight global warming

Permanently warm weather, especially in combination with forest fires, leads to rapid thawing of permafrost, which in turn exacerbates global warming, emitting large amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that is 28 times stronger than carbon dioxide, said Katie Walter Anthony of University of Alaska.

“Methane released from thawing permafrost enters the atmosphere and circulates around the globe,” she said. — Methane that is released in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. This has global implications."

And what happens in the Arctic can even distort the weather in the United States and Europe.

In summer, unusual warming reduces the temperature and pressure differences between the Arctic and lower latitudes, where more people live, says Judah Cohen, an expert on winter weather at Atmospheric Environmental Research.

A combination of factors - such as a high-pressure system with clear skies and very hot sun, extremely long daylight hours and short warm nights - contributed to the spike in temperatures in Siberia, according to meteorologists at the Russian weather agency Roshydromet.

“The surface of the earth is heating up intensely. The nights are very warm, the air does not have time to cool down and continues to heat up for several days,” said Marina Makarova, chief meteorologist at Roshydromet.

Makarova added that the temperature in Verkhoyansk remained unusually high from Friday, June 19, through Monday, June 22.

Scientists agree that the leap indicates a much greater global warming trend.

“The key point is that the climate is changing and global temperatures are rising,” said Freya Wamborg, senior scientist at the Copernicus Climate Change Service in the UK. “We will break more and more records.”

“What is clear is that the warming of the Arctic is adding fuel to the warming of the entire planet,” said Walid Abdalati, a former NASA chief scientist now at the University of Colorado.

Read also on ForumDaily:

Winters are getting shorter and summers are getting hotter: how global warming is changing seasonality

Air pollution kills 7 million people every year: where on the planet is it the cleanest

From Nuclear Race to Global Warming: Challenges the World Forgot About Coronavirus

Extreme heat: in 50 years, billions of people will be in unsuitable climate

Do you want more important and interesting news about life in the USA and immigration to America? — support us donate! Also subscribe to our page Facebook. Select the “Priority in display” option and read us first. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our РєР ° РЅР ° Р »РІ Telegram  and Instagram- there is a lot of interesting things there. And join thousands of readers ForumDaily New York — there you will find a lot of interesting and positive information about life in the metropolis.