Wildfires are burning from the the Amazon to the Arctic — Here's why you should be worried
Aug 22, 2019, 13:59 IST

Satellites observed thick plumes of smoke rising from dozens of large wildfires in SiberiaNASA Earth Observatory
- The Earth’s Arctic region and the
Amazon rainforest are on fire all thanks to climate change. - The peripheries of the Northern Hemisphere are heating up twice as fast as the rest of the Earth while the Amazon has so many different wildfires brewing that the resulting smoke extends for 1.2 million square miles.
- Wildfires in Alaska, Siberia, Russia and Greenland are releasing a record amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the
Amazonia wildfires are burning up the ‘lungs of the planet’ — making a bad problem even worse.
Amazonia — the entirety of the Amazon rainforest — has 10,000 separate wildfires that started burning this very week. The collective smoke from the wildfires created a layer of smoke that stretches for over 1.2 million square million darkening skies over the South American continent.
Latest #Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service aerosol forecast shows smoke from widespread fires in Amazonia rea… https://t.co/3vhSyl5rtk
— Mark Parrington (@m_parrington) 1566314666000
In the northern hemisphere, the entire region — stretching from Siberia all the way to Alaska — is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the Earth. It’s gotten so hot that it’s literally on fire.
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Impressive extent of heavy smoke across much of central Russia/Siberia, Alaska & Canada from numerous intense borea… https://t.co/Tgk3x1l1iS
— Mark Parrington (@m_parrington) 1563979813000
It’s not that wildfires are uncommon in the Arctic region, in fact they happen every summer. But this time around, even the The World Meteorological Organisation ( WMO) called it ‘unprecedented’ noting that its monitoring service, CAMS, has tracked over 100 wildfires in the Arctic Circle.


The lungs of the planet
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The Amazon rainforest has been dubbed the ‘lungs of the planet’ since its innate vastness — 5.4 million square kilometers — produces 20% of the world’s oxygen.
And, right now, since its burning instead of breathing — it’s producing carbon dioxide and other harmful gases instead.
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View this post on InstagramA post shared by Max Morley (@max1morley) on
The record breaking wildfires come in the footsteps of The Guardian reporting that the Amazon shrunk by 1,345 square kilometers in the month of July — twice the area of a city like Tokyo.
The area of around three football fields was disappearing every minute according to data from Brazilian satellites.
Earth’s cushion against climate change on the brink of collapse
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Aside endangering wildlife and their habitats, the fires released an
exorbitant amount of carbon dioxide.
In June alone, fires in the Arctic released over 50 megatonnes of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere, according to the WMO — the same as Sweden’s emissions over a whole year.

It affects you even if you don’t live on the North Pole
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The impact of these fires is crossing borders.
Russia, for instance, is the victim of the smoke plumes degrading the air quality in some of its cities according to NASA’s Earth Observatory.

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The situation in Brazil is as such that even though the country owns most of the Amazon rainforest, its President Jair Bolsonaro has stated that saving Amazonia is not on his list of priorities.
And, even though Brazil might not want to deal with the problem, the darkening skies and overwhelming smoke extends to Paraguay and Bolivia as well.
See also:
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A devastating Arctic temperature rise that could submerge coastal cities and trigger species extinction is now locked in
Rapid melting sea-ice in the Arctic may hamper India’s monsoon pattern: Study
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