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Almost 44,000 people have signed a petition calling for authorities to declare an emergency in the Siberian Federal District due to wildfires in Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk regions, RIA Novosti reported.If there was any merit to global warming due to carbon emissions then the rise in volcanic activity would be much more of a concern. However, by all measures, our planet, overall, is cooling - with cold records being broken all the time, and in both hemispheres. And so these wildfires, heatwaves and droughts are simply one aspect of the extreme fluctuations that occur as our planet continues on into an unsettled period where lower temperatures will soon dominate.
As of Wednesday morning, wildfires had covered almost 846,000 hectares in the north of the Krasnoyarsk territory, with officials saying that there was no immediate threat to cities and villages.
However, local residents say that pollution from wildfires in Krasnoyarsk has spread with air flows to other regions, covering many areas with a thick haze and burning smell.
Large swathes of the Arctic, including in Alaska, northern Canada, and Greenland are also on fire. Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at Denmark's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, said that it was fair to say that July's "Arctic Circle wildfires are now at unprecedented levels."
Comment: With most media outlets exclusively and almost hysterically focused on the record-breaking hot temperatures being recorded this July, it's also of equal (or maybe greater?) significance that many new records are also being set at the other (cold) extreme, see these reports for the same month: