UN Report: Wildfires in 2021 Have Broken New Records
A landmark report by the United Nations on climate change confirms that the year 2021 has broken records in terms of fire intensity and consumed areas.
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The Greek island of Evia is on fire.
A landmark United Nations report on climate change confirmed that devastating wildfires in 2021 have broken new records. This conclusion came after compiling data from satellites tracking the wildfires.
In the US, the Dixie Fire became the largest wildfire in California history, destroying more than 700 square miles (1,811 square kilometers) of land.
European countries around the Mediterranean, such as Greece, Turkey, and Italy, were forced to evacuate residents as well as tourists, from many touristic landscapes.
Today’s #EFFIS Fire Danger Forecast
— Copernicus EMS (@CopernicusEMS) August 12, 2021
Some improvement in #Greece🇬🇷
Extreme & very extreme conditions prevail over large areas of #Turkey🇹🇷, #Albania🇦🇱, #NorthMacedonia🇲🇰, southern #Italy & #Sardegna🇮🇹, and, as earlier forecasted, in Iberia🇪🇸🇵🇹
Hotspots in 🇭🇷🇧🇬🇷🇸 & south of🇫🇷 pic.twitter.com/hyk080SDxi
In Siberia, a sparsely populated icy region in northeastern Russia, forest fires have also broken annual records for fire-related emissions of gases.
While the Siberian fires have not received much media coverage, they are worrying scientists the most because of their dangerous implications.
Mark Barrington, chief scientist at the Copernicus Climate Monitoring Service, said: “We expected some fires in the summer, but the common feature this year is unusual heat waves and dry surface conditions, meaning that the fire risk is high. As a result, we see these fires burning for much longer periods than they normally would."
Complex high values of aerosol optical depth over S Europe/N Africa/Mediterannean for the next few days with #SaharanDust & smoke from several #wildfires. @CopernicusECMWF Atmosphere Monitoring Service @ECMWF forecast from 11 August 00 UTC https://t.co/oJ1gK29RTb pic.twitter.com/0ZxtvzMy7A
— Mark Parrington (@m_parrington) August 11, 2021
Since late spring, satellites have been providing images of large areas of the taiga, near the Arctic Circle, engulfed in flames.
"Of the 3 regions hit by devastating fires, Siberia appears to have been on a continually worsening trend for at least the past 5 years," Barrington added.
CAMS data reported that since June, forest fires in Siberia have emitted more than 188 megatons of carbon, equivalent to about 505 megatons of carbon dioxide, which is close to the gas emissions of the largest European polluter, Germany.
3 more planes -2 Be-200 amphibious + Il-76 -sent to Yakutia by Russian Ministry of Emergencies. Last week some of the fire-extinguishing planes couldn’t work because visibility was too low. Video via Djiikey of a currently active wildfire at Churapchinsky district east of Yakutsk pic.twitter.com/uf5v2MjVzE
— The Siberian Times (@siberian_times) August 10, 2021
In turn, the forest fires in Turkey were described as the worst in at least a decade, spreading to the Greek island of Evia, about 60 miles (100 km) from the capital, Athens, where efforts to extinguish them have been continuing for more than a week, to no avail.
18 states in Algeria have also witnessed massive forest fires, the most dangerous of which is in the state of Tizi Ouzou, while fire suppression operations are continuing in more than 100 different locations.
Although fire activity depends on meteorological conditions that can vary each year, the overall situation is likely to worsen in the future, as the climate in many regions of the world becomes hotter and drier during the summer. The United Nations has indicated that heat waves will now recur every decade after they used to occur once every 50 years.
