Siberian heat wave is a ‘warning cry’ from Arctic

Pine trees are bursting into flames. Boggy peatlands are tinderbox dry. And towns in northern Russia are sweltering under conditions more typical of the tropics.

Reports of record-breaking Arctic heat – registered at more than 100 Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) in the Siberian town of Verkhoyansk on June 20 – are still being verified by the World Meteorological Organization. But even without that confirmation, experts at the global weather agency are worried by satellite images showing that much of the Russian Arctic is in the red.

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That extreme heat is fanning the unusual extent of wildfires across the remote, boreal forest and tundra that blankets northern Russia. Those blazes have in turn ignited normally waterlogged peatlands. Scientists fear the blazes are early signs of drier conditions to come, with more frequent wildfires releasing stores of carbon from peatland and forests that will increase the amount of planet-warming greenhouse gases in the air.

Although peatland covers only 3% of the Earth's land surface, those deposits contain twice as much carbon as all the world's forests together.

Scientists have known climate change is causing the Arctic to warm twice as quickly as the rest of the world, and the Siberian heat wave, which began in May, is typical of that trend.

The peat fires make the need to cut man-made emissions all the more urgent, say scientists, who warn that wider changes in the Arctic could trigger bigger impacts on the global climate system.

"It's a huge warning cry that's going off, but it's not the only systemic problem that's happening in the Arctic related to climate change," said Gail Whiteman, incoming professor of sustainability at Britain's University of Exeter and founder of the Arctic Basecamp group of scientists advocating for rapid climate action.

Whiteman and other researchers are also worried about the rising heat thawing Arctic permafrost faster than expected, which is liable to produce far larger quantities of carbon dioxide and methane than are being released by the fires. Scientist say the fires were stripping away peat and vegetation that normally would form a protective blanket over the permafrost.