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AFP
Moscow
Russia’s forest service said there were nearly 300 wildfires blazing across the vast country’s northern wilderness on Saturday, as it attempted to contain them with methods including explosives and cloud seeding.
Freakishly warm weather across large swathes of Siberia since January, combined with low soil moisture, have contributed to a resurgence of wildfires that devastated the region last summer, the European Union’s climate monitoring network said this week.
Both the number and intensity of fires in Siberia and parts of Alaska have increased since mid-June, resulting in the highest carbon emissions for the month -- 59 million tonnes of CO2 -- since records began in 2003, it said.
Russia’s Aerial Forest Protection Service said it was trying to suppress 136 fires over 43,000 hectares as of Saturday.
Firefighters are using explosives to contain the fires and seeding clouds with silver iodide to encourage rain, it said.
However 159 other fires have been deemed too remote and expensive to handle, with over 333,000 hectares currently ablaze in areas where firefighting efforts have stopped, it said.
Moscow
Russia’s forest service said there were nearly 300 wildfires blazing across the vast country’s northern wilderness on Saturday, as it attempted to contain them with methods including explosives and cloud seeding.
Freakishly warm weather across large swathes of Siberia since January, combined with low soil moisture, have contributed to a resurgence of wildfires that devastated the region last summer, the European Union’s climate monitoring network said this week.
Both the number and intensity of fires in Siberia and parts of Alaska have increased since mid-June, resulting in the highest carbon emissions for the month -- 59 million tonnes of CO2 -- since records began in 2003, it said.
Russia’s Aerial Forest Protection Service said it was trying to suppress 136 fires over 43,000 hectares as of Saturday.
Firefighters are using explosives to contain the fires and seeding clouds with silver iodide to encourage rain, it said.
However 159 other fires have been deemed too remote and expensive to handle, with over 333,000 hectares currently ablaze in areas where firefighting efforts have stopped, it said.
