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What is happening with wildfires in the Arctic? This tweet from @m_parrington got me looking at the @NASAEarth imagery, and it really is 'unprecedented'; a word that we should not use lightly.
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At least 5 of these fires appear to be bigger than 100,000 hectares (these are megafires). The landscapes on fire appear to be peat bogs in Siberia, most north of the Arctic circle.
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This animation shows a fire burning at 69.1°N, 138.2°E, from 19th June through to 28th June. At its largest on 28 June, it extends 50 km × 25 km (125,000 hectares)
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May 2019 was 3–5°C warmer than the long-term average in Siberia, and June 2019 was easily the hottest June on record, globally. These temperatures might represent a threshold for wildfire activity in the Arctic circle.
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Fire 'invasions' into the Arctic Circle (particularly across Russia) were predicted 10 years ago in this paper by Krawchuk et al. (2009). It will be very interesting to see the June 2019 full month active fires when they are available.
and here is the link to the paper: journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…
