Deadly Russian heatwave declared over

Russian meteorologists said on Wednesday Moscow's deadly heat wave was ending after two months of searing weather which took a high human and economic toll.

"Today is the last hot day in Moscow," said Roman Vilfand, head of the meteorological service.

The capital's temperature will plunge from Wednesday's 31 degrees Celsius (88 F) to 21-23 (70-73 F) on Thursday, he said.

Muscovites woke up on Wednesday to what seemed like the remains of the acrid smoke from forest and peat bog fires that had blanketed the capital for two weeks.

Rains of varied intensity were expected in almost all regions of European Russia, the Urals, Siberia and the country's Far East though to the weekend, Roshydromet said on its website.

Officials broke the silence over the effects of the heat and smoke on Aug. 9, when the head of Moscow's health department, Andrei Seltsovsky, said deaths had doubled to 700 per day and heat was the main cause.

The heat wave and drought along with the accompanying forest and peat fires are also estimated to have destroyed a quarter of Russia's grain crop and could shave $14 billion off this year's gross domestic product.

Though smoke still lingered in the air, chances of harmful effects were much lower than the toxic peak in early August, the city's pollution monitoring service said.

Amounts of pollution surged to between four and 10 times on Aug. 4, hitting the worst level in eight years.

The Emergencies Ministry said on Wednesday it was considering lifting the state of emergency placed on the Moscow region as well as the Mordovia region, while the Vladimir and Ryazan regions were still on fire, creating smoke.

Moscow Mayor Luzhkov, who cut his holiday short in the face off criticism he was absent from his choke-filled city, resumed his vacation on Wednesday, state-run RIA Novosti news agency quoted a city council source as saying.

Source:
Reuters, "Deadly Russian heatwave declared over", accessed August 20, 2010

Russia's fires cause "brown cloud," may hit Arctic

NASA satellite image
of smoke over Russia

Smoke from forest fires smothering Moscow adds to health problems of "brown clouds" from Asia to the Amazon, and Russian soot may stoke global warming by hastening a thaw of Arctic ice, environmental experts say.

"Health effects of such clouds are huge," said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, chair of a U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) study of "brown clouds" blamed for dimming sunlight in cities such as Beijing or New Delhi and hitting crop growth in Asia.

The clouds -- a haze of pollution from cars or coal-fired power plants, forest fires and wood and other materials burned for

"Brown Cloud" over China

cooking and heating -- are near-permanent and blamed for causing chronic respiratory and heart diseases.

"In Asia just the indoor smoke -- because people cook with firewood -- causes over a million deaths a year," Ramanathan, of the University of California, San Diego, stated.

Health of Russians at Risk

Moscow's top health official said on Monday that about 700 people were dying every day, twice as many as in normal weather, as Russia grapples with the oppressive heat and waves of toxic smog.

This heat wave is the worst heat wave in 130 years for Russia. Pollution rates were a record 7 times normal levels by Saturday. On Monday carbon monoxide levels were four times the acceptable limit. The pollutants were having an

effect on those most at risk, such as people with cardiac and lung problems, and pregnant women. Doctors have been insisting that people avoid going outside if possible, and wear moistened face masks when they do.

Some 700 people are dying each day in Moscow, compared to a normal 380 per day, top doctor Andrei Seltsovsky was cited by RIA-Novosti as saying.

Deliveries of bodies has risen sharply. "It's awful," said an employee at Hospital No 59. "The refrigerators are full. Yesterday there were 17 bodies, and the day before that 17. Normally it's two or three a day." Seltsovsky added that city morgues were dangerously close to their capacity of 1,500 bodies, with 1,300 currently in store.

All non-emergency operations at hospitals have been canceled and many inpatients have chosen to go home because they cannot stand the heat and smoke in wards without air conditioners or fans. Paramedics are reported to have fainted in stifling ambulances.

Health officials urged caution over the effects of the smog, saying it is too early to calibrate the damage. President Dmitry Medvedev urged people to protect themselves by wearing masks.

Meanwhile, Moscow’s Department of Social Welfare opened 123 anti-smog centers to help Muscovites survive the oppressive heat and smog in the capital. Most of the centers have air-conditioning and it’s possible to stay there from 9 am until 8 pm, Monday to Friday.

“We have two air-conditioners and a TV set, so you’re welcome to stay here,” a social worker at the Yakimanka Social Center told The Moscow News. “You should bring the kids too.”

Other hideouts from the smog in Moscow are cinemas, shopping malls and cars.

Unprecedented Heat Says Weatherman

Carbon Monoxide over Western Russia (NASA)

Russia's top meteorological official, Alexander Frolov, said the heatwave was the most severe in the country's millennium-long history

"No similar heatwave has been observed neither by ourselves nor by our ancestors," he told a televised news conference. "This is a completely unique phenomenon."

Heat Wave in Russia

There is no end to the heat wave yet in sight as the heat in most parts of European Russia is likely to continue over the next 10 days, the deputy director of Hydrometcenter, a senior Russian weather official said on Tuesday.

"The situation is not changing radically," Dmitry Kiktyov, deputy director of Hydrometcenter, said. "The temperature will change insignificantly, and there will be only local rains. They will be insufficient to cushion the current situation."

Emergency services reported about 557 wildfires were burning over 174,000 hectares (430,000 acres) in central Russia and the Moscow region, with flames also raging close to a nuclear reprocessing site in the Urals.

Moscow is not the only city to suffer as television reports said the smoke reached Russia's second city of St. Petersburg and the Urals' main city of Yekaterinburg was also veiled in smog.

Severe Impact on Grain Crops

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that record drought would slash the grain harvest in the leading wheat producer by about 10 million tons.

Putin announced that Russia's grain harvest for 2010 would be 60-65 million tons, Russian news agencies reported. Only last week it had been forecast at 70-75 million tons.

Russia has seen 10 million hectares of land destroyed in the drought and the new figure represents a massive fall compared with its 2009 harvest of 97 million tons.

The severity of the drought has seen states of emergency declared in 27 regions and dealt a major blow to Russia's ambitions of ramping up its global market share over the next years.

Putin last week shocked international markets by announcing that from August 15 Russia would ban exports to keep prices down at home and ensure there was enough feed grain for its cattle herd.

Despite the ban of grain exports, Nizhny Novgorod grain is still trading at high prices, forcing some small farmers to slaughter livestock. Nizhny Novgorod has been particularly badly hit by the deadly wildfires that have swept across European Russia in the past 10 days.

NASA satellite image showing
smoke over Russia

This year's unprecedented heatwave and drought have scorched grain crops, driving many farmers to the brink of bankruptcy. An uncontrollable wave of wildfires sweeping across European Russia is adding to farmers’ woes, threatening their land with destruction.

Larsha, a dilapidated Soviet collective farm was purchased by two men in 2006 and modernized under their management to produce grain, vegetables and milk.

At least one-third of the grain crop at Larsha has been destroyed by the drought this year and the potato harvest, usually sold to the Russian army, wiped out altogether.

The fires are also taking a toll. Tractors that should now be plowing land for sowing winter grain have been mobilized to dig trenches round fields to stop forest fires encroaching on farmland. Criticism has been mounting of the authorities’ handling of the wildfires which have killed at least 52 people and forced thousands to flee their homes.

“Russia’s biggest resource is its land. We once fed the whole of Europe,” said Mr Skoblikov, one of the two owners of Larsha.

Russia's Brown Cloud

"The Russian fires are in principle similar to what you see from other brown clouds," said Henning Rodhe of Stockholm University, a vice-chair of the UNEP Atmospheric Brown Cloud study. "The difference is that this only lasts a few weeks."

Asian pollution has been blamed for dusting Himalayan glaciers with black soot that absorbs more heat than reflective snow and ice and so speeds a thaw. Worldwide, however, the polluting haze blocks out sunlight and so slows climate change.

For the climate, "the main concern ... is what impact the Russian smoke would have on the Arctic, in terms of black carbon and other (particles) in the smoke settling on the sea ice," Ramanathan said.
ARCTIC ICE

In past years "we have had episodes of biomass burning that have brought clouds in over the Arctic," said Kim Holmen, director of research at the Norwegian Polar Institute.

Smog over the Arctic

Holmen, who runs a pollution monitoring station in Svalbard in the high Arctic, said the air over Russia was fairly stable in recent days, concentrating smoke over land. But a shift in winds, easing pollution in Moscow, could sweep smog northwards.

Arctic sea ice, which shrinks in mid-September to an annual minimum before the winter freeze, now covers a slightly bigger area than in 2007 and 2008, the smallest extents since satellite measurements began in the 1970s.

The exposure of Arctic Ocean water to sunlight is a threat to the livelihoods of Arctic peoples and creatures such as polar bears. It also accelerates global warming, blamed by the U.N. panel of climate experts on mankind's use of fossil fuels.


"Such conditions are likely to become more common in the future," Rodhe said of the Russian heatwave and related fires.

Asia is most studied for brown clouds but they also form over parts of North America, Europe, the Amazon basin and southern Africa. Burning of savannah in sub-Saharan Africa, to clear land for crops, is a new source.

Peat bog near
Moscow burns

Forest and peat bog fires are burning over 1,740 sq kms (672 sq mile), the Russian Emergencies Ministry said. By contrast, official Brazilian data show the Amazon rainforest lost 1,810 sq kms in almost a year to June 2010.

Holmen also echoed Russian authorities' worries that the fires may also release radioactive elements locked in vegetation since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986.

Radioactive isotopes include strontium 90 and caesium 137. Other industrial pollutants such as PCBs could also be freed.

Source:
Reuters, "Russia's fires cause "brown cloud," may hit Arctic", accessed August 10, 2010
Reuters, "Heat seen continuing in European Russia for 10 days", accessed August 10, 2010
The Guardian, "Moscow death rate doubles as smoke from wildfires shrouds capital", accessed August 10, 2010
Moscow News, "Deaths double in Moscow smog", accessed August 10, 2010
The Financial Times, "Russian farmers on brink of bankruptcy", accessed August 10, 2010
The Montreal Gazette, "Moscow deaths double in Russia's 'worst ever' heat", August 10, 2010

Fires rage in Russia, death tolls rises to 48

A boat travels along the Moskva River next to the Moscow Kremlin shrouded by heavy smog, August 4, 2010.

President Dmitry Medvedev broke off his summer holiday on Wednesday and flew back to Moscow for emergency talks as the death toll from Russia's deadliest wildfires in nearly four decades hit 48.

Thick clouds of acrid, choking smoke from forest and peat bog fires blanketed the capital. Authorities told residents to stay indoors despite the sweltering heat to avoid concentrations of toxic carbon monoxide well above safe levels.

Keen to stamp his authority on the government's response to the fires -- so far largely handled by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin -- Medvedev sacked several senior navy officers for failing to stop forest fires from ravaging a naval storage base outside Moscow last week and destroying valuable equipment.

"Despite the fact that we asked the Defense Ministry to help with extinguishing fires to help the civil population, in the majority of cases the ministry cannot (even) protect itself," Medvedev told officials in the Kremlin after returning from his Black Sea summer residence at Sochi.

The fires have swept through Russia's tinder-dry forests in the hottest summer since records began 130 years ago, leaving thousands homeless and prompting leaders to declare a state of emergency in seven of the worst hit regions.

Critics say the government has been slow to respond. They also allege that changes to the law rammed through parliament by the Kremlin and the timber lobby in 2006 fatally weakened fire protection in Russia's vast woodlands, the world's biggest.

"The situation with forest fires in the country has on the whole stabilized but remains tense and dangerous," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told officials during a visit to the southern region of Voronezh, one of the worst hit.

MONEY PLEDGE SOOTHES

Putin has promised the state will help rebuild all homes destroyed by the fires and has pledged generous compensation.

The prospect of government cash led a group of women to praise Russia's paramount leader when he visited a local hotel housing 155 people whose homes have burned down.

Residents thanked Putin for offering money and asked eagerly for details of compensation schemes, taking pictures of the premier on mobile phones as he spoke with them.

The visit to Voronezh contrasted sharply with a meeting in Nizhny Novgorod last Friday when villagers berated Putin, demanding immediate action to rebuild their homes.

Weeping women greeted Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as he visited Verkhnyaya Vereya, a village where all 341 homes were burned to the ground and five residents were killed in the blaze.

"We aren't asking for anything out of this world. We are just asking for a guarantee that we will be able to live here by winter," a woman resident said in footage shown on state Channel One television.

The village, one of three hamlets destroyed around Nizhny Novgorod, Russia's fifth-largest city some 300 miles (475

People search for belongings from their burned-out homes in the town of Voronezh, some 500 kilometers south of Moscow, on Saturday. (Mikhail Metzel/Associated Press)

kilometers) east of Moscow, looked like a ghost town coated in gray ash.

"Before winter, each house will be restored," Putin told the distressed crowd. "I promise - the village will be rebuilt.", adding that the standard compensation of 50,000 rubles ($A1834) per household for loss of possessions would be increased to 200,000 rubles ($A7341) per resident.

Putin flew into the village of Verkhnyaya Vereya on Friday morning after more than 500 residents were left homeless by a fire.

In characteristic strongman style, he was shown facing residents, his sleeves rolled up and meeting with Emergency Minister Sergei Shoigu, where he ordered officials "not to get tied up in red tape".

Television reports showed a central street with all the houses razed to brick foundations and evacuated residents sheltering in a children's summer camp.

"I was at home, I couldn't breathe, the houses were burning, and I couldn't see anything," Valentina Britova, an elderly woman in a headscarf, told the Rossiya television channel.

Some 170,000 people including troops were battling at least 520 fires raging on Wednesday over an area of 1,885 sq km, the Emergencies Ministry said.

The wildfires are Russia's deadliest since 1972, when at least 104 people died in Moscow region alone in forest and peat fires that destroyed an area of 100,000 square km of the then Soviet Union, the ministry said.

A record heatwave has engulfed central parts of European Russia since mid June, ruining much of the wheat crop in some areas and raising fears that a poor harvest in the world's third largest wheat exporter could push up global food prices.

The economy showed the first signs of damage from the heatwave, with the services sector expanding in July at its slowest pace in four months.

German carmaker Volkswagen said that due to smoke from the fires, it had temporarily halted production at a factory in Kaluga, southwest of Moscow, that produced 48,500 cars last year.

MOSCOW SMOKE

Moscow, a city of 10.5 million, was shrouded in acrid smoke.

"The pollution is at the worst level since 2002 and is approaching those levels," Alexei Popikov, an expert on air quality at Moscow's pollution monitoring agency, stated.

The carbon monoxide count in Moscow soared to 5.7 times safe levels overnight and Russia's top lung doctor warned residents are inhaling the equivalent of 40 cigarettes every few hours.

City dwellers complained of waking with headaches and sore throats. Shops have run out of fans and some residents have taken to wearing masks over their mouths in the street.

The forest fires and scorching temperatures have complicated operations for Russia's large and aging nuclear sector.

A reactor at the Novovoronezh power station was shut down on Wednesday because transformers broke due to high air temperatures. Other reactors at the station were working normally, state nuclear corporation Rosatom said.

More than 2,100 firefighters were battling fires near a secretive nuclear research center at Sarov in Nizhny Novgorod province, where the first Soviet atom and hydrogen bombs were designed, about 350 km (220 miles) east of Moscow.

Source:
Reuters, "Fires rage in Russia, death toll rises to 48", accessed August 4, 2010
CBS News, "Russia Mobilizes Army To Fight Fires That Kill 25", accessed August 4, 2010

Scientist says hundreds may die as smog blankets Moscow

A prominent scientist said hundreds of people could die as smog from peat fires blanketed a sweltering Moscow for a second day on Tuesday.

Moscow region chief Boris Gromov asked Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to allocate 25 billion roubles ($827 million) to fight the fires smoldering in the forests around Moscow.

Alexei Yablokov, an internationally renowned biologist who runs Russia's Green Party, said air pollution caused by the smog's high amount of carbon dioxide could kill hundreds more people than usual in the Moscow region.

"There will be at least 100 additional deaths per day this time round," Yablokov stated, referring to the last such smog cloud in 2002 in which he calculated 600 people had died each week.

The Moscow government agency overseeing air pollution, Mosekonomonitoring, said the levels of carbon monoxide in the air on Tuesday shot up by 20-30 percent more than normal levels. (Left: Kremlin barely shows through smog)

Russia's senior public health official suggested on Tuesday employers free their staff while the thick smog and record-breaking heat in the Russian capital surged.

"Employers, if there is a possibility, could allow people to not come to work," Gennady Onishchenko, head of Russia's health

protection agency, told Interfax news agency.

Peat, used in the past to produce heat and electricity, smolders deep underground in winters and summers. Gromov said the only solution to the fires was to pour water over deposits.

"According to preliminary estimates, only in one district where fires are now most severe, over 4.5 billion roubles is needed. We have five such districts," Gromov told Putin during an emergency video conference.

Putin said he would ask the emergency and economy ministries to examine the request.

The emergencies ministry said that in the last 24 hours there had appeared 58 new fires in the Moscow region, 30 of them at peat deposits.

Source:
Reuters,,"Scientist says hundreds may die as smog blankets Moscow", accessed July 28, 2010