July 28, 2021 - Smoke shrouds Siberia

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Much of Siberia was shrouded under a massive cloud of thick, gray smoke
as hundreds of fires burned across Russia in late July 2021. On July
27, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on
board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this true-color image, the dense
cloud of smoke stretched more than 1,200 miles (1,930 km) from east to
west and was 400 miles (640 km) wide over much of the span. For most of
this expanse, the smoke was so thick that it obscured the underlying
land from view.

Russia’s fire season started exceptionally early this year, with the
Moscow Times reporting on January 27 that peat fires were still
smoldering in and around the Arctic Circle in Siberia, despite frigid
temperatures. Once peat ignites, it is difficult to extinguish and a
peat fire can smolder underground for many months before breaking to
the surface. If many such “zombie fires”, as they are called, continue
to burn after snow douses summer fires, it can set the stage for a
nearly year-round fire season. Peat fires are also notorious for
creating heavy smoke and releasing large amounts of carbon due to the
high content of partially decomposed vegetation in peat soil.

According to Russian News Agency TASS, on July 27 there were 135 blazes
across Yakutia that covered 1.2 million hectares. They report that the
majority of the wildfires were attributed to natural causes,
particularly thunderstorm fronts that bring lightning strikes to the
dry forests. So far, the direct damage from wildfires in Yakutia this
year was estimated at more than 1 billion rubles (13.5 million US
dollars).

Yakutia, also known as the Sakha Republic, is quite large, covering
more than 3 million square kilometers (1 million sq mi), or about half
of Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District. Famous for extra-frigid
winter temperatures, with the record lowest temperatures in the
Northern Hemisphere measured in Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon, Yakutia has
been sweltering under record-setting heat this spring and summer.

High temperatures, along with little precipitation, has created
tinder-box conditions across much of Russia this year. ABC News
reported that as of July 26, about 1.88 million hectares (4.6 million
acres) of forest were burning in Russia – an area larger than the U.S.
state of Connecticut. The Russian “fire season” typically begins in
March and ends September 30.

Image Facts
Satellite: Terra
Date Acquired: 7/27/2021
Resolutions: 1km (1.9 MB), 500m (6.1 MB),
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC



https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2021-07-28

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