"Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors."

-Jonas Salk

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Russian Heat Wave and Peat Fires

It's surprisingly hard to find good photos of the smog/heat emergency in Moscow. The best I have found is this set from the Chinese news service xinhuanet.com .

Joe Romm points out that this heat anomaly is part of a global pattern this summer:

Globally nine countries have smashed all-time temperature records, “making 2010 the year with the most national extreme heat records,” as meteorologist Jeff Masters has reported.

This is a serious abnormality. The Russian weather service has never measured such temperatures in Moscow in July,” said Dmitry Kiktyov, Deputy Director of the Hydrometeorological Center of Russia.

5 comments:

Alexander Ac said...

There is more on summer heat waves in 2010 on wiki here:

Michael Tobis said...

Where?

Alexander Ac said...

Ah sorry...:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Northern_Hemisphere_summer_heat_wave

BTW - debate between Schmidt/Romm/Curry is becoming Curryous... :-/

Ale

Oale said...

Yesterday Finland got its highest temperature since 1934 from this same heat wave. Meteorologists were suspensed if the all time record of 35,9 degrees Celsius will be broken today.

Gravityloss said...

It was broken, 37.2 degrees at Joensuu airport.
http://yle.fi/uutiset/kotimaa/2010/07/kaikkien_aikojen_lampoennatys_uusiksi_372_astetta_1865273.html

Funny to note that the coldest temperature on record was noted when I was in the military... Well, your clothes don't get wet when you're in the forest lying in the snow and it's cold enough. ;)


But the forest and peat fires. We suffer from those in Finland somewhat. Some of those happen in Russia but the winds transport them here.

It could tell something about just how organized a society is. (There is a mental link to the floods coverage by our host here.)

Also Russia has more vast areas of forests with little roads or habitation so forest fires are probably noticed later and are harder to fight. I think we are a far *too* organized in some regards - it's hard to find large patches of untouched forest here.

I don't know if there was one peat fire in Finland this summer but there have been some earlier. The Midwest was bone dry, I just came from there today. Only yesterday it rained 12 mm. They must have been just extra careful.