October 6 2021
Firefighters battle a wildfire near the village of Andreyevsky. Photo by Maxim Slutsky / TASS via Getty ImagesVicious Climate Cycle Spins As Russia Burns Rising temperatures
heated by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels like 🦖 oil and 🦕 gas are
melting permafrost — land previously frozen year round — and causing problems for Russia's oil and gas industry, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Over the last 45 years, Russian temperatures have
risen 2.5 faster than the global average. The melting permafrost
on which two-thirds of the country sits is also physically destabilizing oil and gas infrastructure and forcing companies to spend millions to prevent disasters, like when a ruptured tank in remote Siberia hemorrhaged 20,000 tons of diesel fuel.
The
hotter temperatures and
melting permafrost are
accelerating vicious climatic cycles by releasing heat-trapping methane previously frozen underground and
fueling almost incomprehensible wildfires.
Russian
wildfires have burned
65,000 square miles (41.6 million acres) so far this year, Grist reported last week, and in July and August alone produced more CO2 pollution than the entire country of Germany in a year. (Wall Street Journal $,
Grist; Climate Signals background: Arctic amplification, Wildfires)