Sunday July 28th… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Where There Is Arctic Heat There Is Fire
It would appear that due to a wetter pattern last winter and spring in the western U.S. that there won’t be as bad of a fire season as has been experienced there in the past few years, or at the very least the season will get off to a late start. Yes, let’s count our blessings where we can find them. Symptomatic climate change circa 2019 will be known for exceptional heat and drought across Europe, not from what has happened across the U.S. as far as average temperatures go, at least through July. Now the heat dome responsible for a second historic heat wave across Europe will be moving into the Arctic, an area already plagued by heat, and as a consequence, fire.
The following Guardian article relates to the reader just how much is burning at high latitudes, giving us a good picture of why what is occurring on our planet is just not normal:
More than 100 Arctic wildfires burn in worst-ever fire season – Smoke plumes from huge blazes in Greenland, Siberia, and Alaska visible from space – “These are some of the biggest fires on the planet, with a few appearing to be larger than 100,000 hectares”
By Edward Helmore
26 July 2019
(The Guardian) – The Arctic is suffering its worst wildfire season on record, with huge blazes in Greenland, Siberia, and Alaska producing plumes of smoke that can be seen from space.
The Arctic region has recorded its hottest June ever. Since the start of that month, more than 100 wildfires have burned in the Arctic circle. In Russia, 11 of 49 regions are experiencing wildfires.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the United Nations’ weather and climate monitoring service, has called the Arctic fires “unprecedented”.
The largest blazes, believed to have been caused by lightning, are located in Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Buryatia. Winds carrying smoke have caused air quality to plummet in Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberia.
In Greenland, the multi-day Sisimiut blaze, first detected on 10 July 2019, came during an unusually warm and dry stretch in which melting on the vast Greenland ice sheet commenced a month earlier than usual.
In Alaska, as many as 400 fires have been reported. The climatologist Rick Thomas estimated the total area burned in the state this season as of Wednesday morning at 2.06 million acres.
Thomas Smith, an environmental geographer at the London School of Economics, told USA Today fires of such magnitude have not been seen in the 16-year satellite record.
“These are some of the biggest fires on the planet, with a few appearing to be larger than 100,000 hectares,” Smith said.
“The amount of [carbon dioxide] emitted from Arctic circle fires in June 2019 is larger than all of the CO2 released from Arctic circle fires in the same month from 2010 through to 2018 put together.” [more]
I’ll be reporting on effects from the “Arctic heatwave” as forecast looking at 500 millibar charts for this week. Remember, what was reported by The Guardian came before soon to be anomalous heat. As stated yesterday this heat dome is the same one that was over Europe last week, which is moving north. Here is what we see forecast for mid-week. Just look at that big yellow and red spot near Greenland in the polar area:
More European heat from Sunday:
Here is more climate and weather news from Sunday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article.)
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Guy Walton- “The Climate Guy”