Siberia’s Epic Wildfires Come Far Too Early

[knocker]

 

What we are currently witnessing is something that should never happen — an outbreak of fires with summer intensity during late April at a time when Siberia should still be frigid and frozen.

 

http://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/when-april-is-the-new-july-siberias-epic-wildfires-come-far-too-early/

[Guest]

 Just because it is cold and there is snow on the ground it does not mean that it can't be dry - I recall back in March 2010 we had a snow storm at our place in Languedoc, after which the snow gradually melted/sublimated to a point about 3 to 4 days afterwards there was still a half covering of snow.

 

On the way to Narbonne we saw the fire engine at the side of the road where they had been extinguishing a brush fire which had developed in the ditch - the vegetation must have been tinder dry to have caught and to my eyes, used to damp old Blighty, it was a bit surreal to see the blackened vegetation amongst the snow drifts.

 

The other clue to the dryness was also that the roads dried out very quickly - no salt was used which would have aided this.

[laserguy]

Why should it 'never happen'? I should never run out of milk, but have done on on or two occasions - and that's no more a symptom of early-onset Alzheimer's than this is of 'climate change'. More crapola...

[BornFromTheVoid]

It does help to read the piece, see the reasoning...

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"Last year, during late July and early August, a series of epic wildfires raged to the north and west of Russia’s far eastern Amur region. About a week later, the skies opened up in a ten-day-long deluge that pushed the Amur River bordering Russia and China to levels not seen in the entire 150 year span of record-keeping for the region. Whole cities were submerged as the Amur leapt its banks to form a kind of massive inland sea.

The floods promoted strong growth in the region, penetrating permafrost zones to enhance melt, providing major fuel sources for fires should they re-emerge. Come winter, a persistent warm ridge pattern in the Jet Stream transported hotter than usual air over this region. The winter was far, far warmer than it should have been. And when spring came, it came like the onset of summer.

Last week, temperatures soared into the 70s and ever since the beginning of April, freakishly large fires for so early in the burn season erupted. By April 23rd, the Russian fire ministry had logged nearly 3,000 fires. The outbreak was so intense that, just a few days ago, more than 5,000 pieces of heavy equipment and an army of firefighters were engaged throughout a large stretch of Russia from the still frozen shores of Lake Baikal to the far eastern Amur region."

[knocker]

It does help to read the piece, see the reasoning...------------- ------------ ----------

 

That's a bit reactionary BFTV. It's tantamount to asking a Shaivite to shave.

[laserguy]

It does help to read the piece, see the reasoning...

 

Thanks.... so given the contributory factors, there were good reasons for this to potentially happen. How or why these guys couldn't have said that without weaving 'climate change' into the plot, I'll maybe never know. knocks - what the hell are you on about? I'd suggest that you stopped reading the piece as soon as you came across what you were looking for - 'climate change'. I stopped there, too....

[Gray-Wolf]

Anyone who looks at the impacts of 'soot' on snow/ice melt might prick up their ears to such news? With the Arctic basin still ice full then any drizzle of soot on the surface will only serve in intensify melt later in the season ( leading to more drying/permafrost melt as open water impacts land temps up to 1,500km inland!).

 

Though such melt acceleration cannot be claimed to be 'man made' the set up that produced it is.

[BornFromTheVoid]

The lowest April snow cover on record for Eurasia is certainly tied in with all this. Interesting times ahead this summer...

http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/table_rankings.php?ui_set=1#eurasia

[4wd]

Spring is the time fires are most likely as air can be very dry and there's a lot of fine dead stuff about.In high summer there's more heat but more green stuff which suppresses fine fuel moisture, furthermore many continental climates have more convective showers which are absent during typical spring drought.TL;DR - spring fires are not unusual, story is usual propaganda trying to make you believe normal events are something new and unprecedented.

[BornFromTheVoid]

Spring is the time fires are most likely as air can be very dry and there's a lot of fine dead stuff about.

In high summer there's more heat but more green stuff which suppresses fine fuel moisture, furthermore many continental climates have more convective showers which are absent during typical spring drought.

TL;DR - spring fires are not unusual, story is usual propaganda trying to make you believe normal events are something new and unprecedented.

 

If spring is the most ideal time for wildfires, then why do they usually occur between May and October across Siberia? Might temperature and snow cover play a role? Whatever the cause, this is an unusual event.

 

Perhaps when your attempt at a common sense approach is in opposition to what the evidence shows, it's time to re-examine if your common sense is up to the task?

 

 

Natural Resources Minister Sergei Donskoi warned a conference chaired by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev: 'The forest fire situation is tense in Russia this year. Due to a shortage of precipitation the forest fire season has begun almost one and a half months ahead of the norm.'

http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/casestudy/news/forest-fires-arrive-early-as-siberia-sees-record-high-temperatures/

[Gray-Wolf]

I get the feeling that 4 will continue to fight his rear guard action as more and more 'unusual' occurrences mount up ? Every time a changing climate is used to describe events he will pop up and say 'not so' even if world experts are the ones alerting us to the issues.

 

As the permafrost melts out ever deeper snows just insulate that warmth below from the very cold Siberian winter temps. Once the sun gains strength the snow is impacted from below and above leaving the tinder dry surface open for fires. Before too long we will start to see the peat itself burn meaning early fires will start as soon as the wind gets into the smouldering peat each spring......... and what of the Sea ice and soot such fires produce?

[knocker]

Wildfires Around Lake Baikal, Russia

 

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/wildfires-around-lake-baikal-russia/#.U3uA6Haz1X4