MSGID: 1:317/3 62e6c35c   
   PID: hpt/lnx 1.9.0-cur 2019-01-08   
   TID: hpt/lnx 1.9.0-cur 2019-01-08   
   July 31, 2022 - Siberia Shrouded in Smoke   
      
      Fires in Russia   
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      A massive cloud of thick smoke and cloud obscured more than 275,700   
      square miles (443,696 square km) of Siberia from satellite view in late   
      July 2022. That’s larger than the country of Morocco. It’s also larger   
      than the state of Texas, the second-largest state in the United States.   
      The smoke was rising from many dozens of fires burning across lush   
      taiga and peat soils, primarily in Yakutia (Sakha Republic) and   
      Khabarovsk Krai, Russia. In the southeast, smoke reaches over the   
      coastal Sea of Okhotsk.   
      
      The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board   
      NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of the scene on July   
      23. Each red “hot spot” marks an area where the thermal bands on the   
      MODIS instrument have detected high temperatures. When accompanied by   
      smoke (as in this image), such hot spots are diagnostic for actively   
      burning fires.   
      
      Fires have been burning in the region since at least late April. On May   
      10, several media outlets reported that Russian President Vladmir Putin   
      said, in a meeting shown on state TV, that the Siberian fires were   
      posing significant material damage and posing a threat to life, the   
      environment, and the economy, and urged regional officials deal with   
      the forest fires. On the weekend before his speech, at least eight   
      people had been killed and hundreds of buildings destroyed. At that   
      time, 4,000 fires had burned about 270,000 hectares.   
      
      Since May, the fires have intensified. According to Sakha’s emergencies   
      ministry, 51 fires burned across roughly 9,737 hectares (38 square   
      miles) on July 18 in Sakha alone. More than 500 people were fighting   
      the fires in Sakha, and thousands more were deployed to fire fronts   
      across Russia, according to Russia’s ministry of emergency situations   
      (EMERCOM).   
      
      On July 29, The Siberian Times tweeted “Wildfires rage across Yakutia,   
      Russia’s coldest & largest territory, with more than 150,000 hectares   
      on fire. Air quality in the republic’s capital is polluted to more than   
      36 times above the norm; there is a ban to enter the woods for 21 days   
      in all of Yakutia”. A follow-up tweet on July 30 stated, “the overall   
      territory burned by wildfires has reached 325,000 hectares”.   
      
      For the past two years, Sakha Republic (Yakutia) has endured unusually   
      severe fire seasons. In 2021, more than 8.4 million hectares of forests   
      burned in Sakha, nearly four times the long-term average.   
      
      Image Facts   
      Satellite:  Aqua   
      Date Acquired: 7/23/2022   
      Resolutions:  1km (501.1 KB),  500m (1.6 MB),  250m (4.5 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=2022-07-31   
       
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