Following a summer of intense drought the forests of Siberia are burning in a climate altering event that is one of the original tipping points predicted by NASA scientists.
Over 2 million hectares of forest have burned in the last six months, four times the area incinerated in Australia’s Black Saturday fires in 2009.
The fires release vast amounts of carbon dioxide and water into the atmosphere, accelerating climate chaos and further damaging the landscape. Water does not soak into the scorched earth and so nutrients are swept away further retarding the recovery of the landscape
Wildfires Increasingly Consuming Siberian Forests,
Russia’s Siberian forests, hit with a severe drought this summer, are increasingly being consumed by wildfires that are consistently underestimated by the government. The fires have destroyed 2 million hectares.
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/09/siberia-has-been-burning-all-summer/