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'Nobody saw it coming this soon,' one scientist said. 'It’s likely the forests won’t be coming back as we know them.'

Het noordpoolgebied wordt de afgelopen weken geteisterd door enorme bosbranden. Die branden hebben nu al meer koolstofdioxide uitgestoten in 2019 dan in elk ander jaar sinds 2003, toen satellietmetingen begonnen.

The Arctic is on fire. Record-breaking temperatures and strong winds are fueling an unprecedented number of wildfires across the region this summer. In Siberia alone, hundreds of wildfires captured by satellite images July 28 spanned about 3 million hectares of land. Across Alaska, as many as 400 wildfires were burning as of mid-July. And the heat is also melting Greenland’s ice at an alarming rate.

Plume from unprecedented blazes forecast to reach Alaska as fires rage for third month. A cloud of smoke and soot bigger than the European Union is billowing across Siberia as wildfires in the Arctic Circle rage into an unprecedented third month.

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and after the hottest June ever recorded on Earth, the region is literally on fire. From Greenland to Siberia to Alaska, huge swathes of flame and smoke are wrapping themselves around the upper Northern Hemisphere of our planet, like a suffocating scarf.