2010 Russian wildfires

2010 Russian wildfires
Smoke over western Russia on 4 August 2010
Date(s)late July 2010 – early September 2010
LocationRussia[1]
Statistics
Burned area300,000 hectares (740,000 acres)[2]
Land usevillages, farmland, woodlands
Impacts
Deaths54 in wildfires
55,736 in heat wave[3]
Structures destroyed2,000
Pyrocumulonimbus cloud (circular cloud, left) caused by 1 August 2010 wildfires.

The 2010 Russian wildfires were several hundred wildfires that broke out across Russia, primarily in the west in summer 2010. They started burning in late July and lasted until early September 2010. The fires were associated with record-high temperatures, which were attributed to climate change[4]—the summer had been the hottest recorded in Russian history[5]—and drought.[6]

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev declared a state of emergency in seven regions, and 28 other regions were under a state of emergency due to crop failures caused by the drought.[7] The fires cost roughly $15 billion in damages.

A combination of the smoke from the fires, producing heavy smog blanketing large urban regions and the record-breaking heat wave put stress on the Russian healthcare system. Munich Re estimated that in all, 56,000 people died from the effects of the smog and the heat wave.[8] The 2010 wildfires were the worst on record to that time.

  1. ^ Henry, Patrick (3 August 2010). "Russian Wildfires' Death Toll Rises to 50; Drought May Force Export Ban". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on 7 August 2010. Retrieved 7 August 2010.
  2. ^ UNEP Year Book2011, An Overview of Our Changing Environment Archived 7 April 2014 at the Wayback Machine, United Nations Environment Programme 2011 page 3
  3. ^ Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters
  4. ^ Hansen, J.; Sato, M.; Ruedy, R. (2012). "PNAS Plus: Perception of climate change". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 109 (37): E2415-23. doi:10.1073/pnas.1205276109. PMC 3443154. PMID 22869707.
  5. ^ "Russia Wildfires Rage Amid Record Heat". .voanews.com. 3 August 2010. Archived from the original on 4 August 2010. Retrieved 10 August 2010.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference lenta_2_avg_smoke was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Kramer, Andrew (8 August 2010). "A smoky curtain falls on Moscow". The Age. Melbourne. Retrieved 7 August 2010.
  8. ^ Staff Writers. "Natural disasters killed 295,000 in 2010: reinsurer". Agence Presse-France. Disaster Management – Terra Daily. Retrieved 3 January 2011.