July the Month of Instantaneous Combustion

Coming to a place near you soon!

Forest fires sweep across central Russia

Wildfires caused by soaring temperatures kill at least a dozen people, consume  1,500 homes

Massive blazes force hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their home in Russia’s hottest summer on 130-year record.

A security guard walks near grass, which was lit on fire by severe heat, at Khodynskoe pole aviation museum in Moscow July 29, 2010.  Photo: Reuters/ Xinhua. Image may be subject to copyright.

A heatwave has plagued Central  Russia and Siberia since June, incinerating homes, destroying crops and driving thousands of farmers to the verge of bankruptcy, a report said.

Eastern Siberia on Fire

Fires are still burning in eastern Siberia, north of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The above natural-color image was captured by MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite on July 30, 2010.   Source: NASA E/O. Click image to enlarge. Download large image (4 MB, JPEG)

Dominic Point Fire, Montana

Original Caption:  Lightning strikes and human activities in the forested mountains of the western United States can spark wildfires during the summer dry season. The Dominic Point Fire was first reported near 3:00 p.m. local time on Sunday, July 25, 2010. Approximately one hour later, the International Space Station crew photographed the fire’s large smoke plume—already extending at least 8 kilometers (5 miles) to the east—from orbit as the station passed almost directly overhead. Forest Service fire crews, slurry bombers, and helicopters were on the scene by that evening.

The fire may have been started by a lightning strike, as there are no trails leading into the fire area located approximately 22 kilometers (14 miles) northeast of Hamilton, Montana, according to local reports. As of July 26, 2010, the fire had burned approximately 700 to 1,000 acres (283 to 405 hectares) of the Bitterroot National Forest in western Montana. The fire is thought to have expanded quickly due to high temperatures, low humidity, and favorable winds with an abundance of deadfall—dead trees and logs that provide readily combustible fuels—in the area. The image was taken by the Expedition 24 crew. See the International Space Station Program and the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Click image to enlarge. Download large image (999 KB, JPEG)

Bull Fire in Sequoia National Forest, Calif

The Bull Fire started in the early hours of  Monday, July 26 on the southern edge of California’s ailing Sequoia National Forest. MODIS on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image at 2:40 p.m. U.S. Pacific Time on July 27.  Source: NASA E/O. Click image to enlarge. Download large image (3 MB, JPEG)

Fire Headlines

• Wild fire in South France burns forest
• Heat wave causes numerous wild fires in central Mongolia
• Portugal fights against forest fire

Moscow heat breaks 130-year record

Image of the Day:

Heat, Pollution

Smog-covered Moscow swelters in hottest day since records began 130 years ago, as temperatures reach 37.4 ºC (99.3 ºF)

People walk along Red Square, with St. Basil’s Cathedral seen through heavy smog caused by peat fires in out-of-city forests, in Moscow, July 26, 2010.
Credit: REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin. Image may be subject to copyright.

“The all-time record has been broken, we have never recorded a day this hot before,” said Gennady Yeliseyev, deputy head of Russia’s state weather agency. “The previous high of 36.8 degrees Celsius was recorded on August 7, 1920, he said.”  Reuters reported.

“The new record could be broken by Wednesday,” he added.

“Muscovites will have to inhale smoke for another two to two and a half months,” said Alexei Yaroshenko, head of the forest program at Greenpeace Russia. “He said the smoke could eclipse the worst smog registered in Moscow, in 1872 and 1837.”

Some 34 peat fires and 26 forest fires burning in the area surrounding Moscow, covering 59 hectares (145 acres), the emergencies ministry said, Reuters  reported .

As of  July 22, severe drought had destroyed crops over 100,000 square kilometers (38,600 square miles), an area larger than Portugal, the Agriculture Ministry said.

Related Links:

• World Sizzling in Hottest Year to Date
• U.S. Had 8th Warmest June, Wetter
• U.S. Had 8th Warmest June, Wetter
• Earth: Wounded and Feverish
• Collapse Diary

• Kansas heat wave kills 2,000 cattle
• 2010 Disaster Calendar [JULY]
• 2010 Disasters

SoCal End-to-End Corporate Arsons Blaze On!

3, 2, 1, Action: SoCal fires are using the same ‘template’ as the US unending wars

SoCal: New Bull Crap Fires Rage on!

A new blaze in the hills of Ventura County NW of Los Angeles has spread to nearly 7,000 acres moving towards the city of Moorpark.

An early snap of Guiberson Fire. About 150 fire crew were reportedly tackling  the blaze, which broke out in Ventura County between the towns of Fillmore and Moorpark, Tuesday morning. Photo: KABC. Image may be subject to copyright.

The fire, named Guiberson Fire, has “torched oil fields and threatened homes,” according to a report, though it’s not known how many structures are threatened.

The Guiberson fire threatens homes, ranches and farmland, among other structures, Bill Nash of the Ventura County Fire Department said. The Ventura County sheriff has reportedly called for voluntary evacuations  in rural sections of Moorpark which includes a number of  ranches, he said.

According to Nash several pipelines run below the brush-covered fields, though he’s unsure as to how many.

“Air tankers including a DC-10 jumbo jet and big helitankers bombarded the flames with retardant and water while hundreds of firefighters worked on the ground.” Another report said.

Another fire broke out in Riverside County, 40 miles east of Los Angeles, and burned from the city of Riverside into the city of Norco and toward adjacent Corona. Norco Fire Chief Jack Frye said the 120- to 150-acre fire was up to 60 percent contained and no homes had been lost despite gusts up to 45 mph.

Pile it on fire

LA Times quoted the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department as saying that the fire had started through “manure spontaneous combustion from a local ranch.”

Officials did not disclose exactly where the fire started or how. But spontaneous manure fires are fairly common in farm communities, often occurring during conditions of extreme heat. Temperatures around where today’s fire started near Fillmore topped 100 degrees, with wind gusts topping 50 mph.

Related Links:

• Calif Fires 2009 – Part 2 ‘We’re Watching You!’ [includes entries up to September 22, 2009]
• California Fires 09 – Part 3 ‘Pile on the Manure, Sheriff!’  [for entries dated after September 22, 2009]

Alaska: One Fire Away From Exporting Charcoal

Images of Day:

Forest Fires Burn Massive Scars on Alaska’s Face

Background: Alaska on Fire AND First the Beetles Attacked!

Human activity is ultimately responsible for the intensity and frequency of most present-day forest fires like Alaska’s; to call them ‘wildfires,’ therefore, is disingenuous and unintelligent.

Burn Scars Near Confluence of Yukon and Tanana Rivers, Alaska
infrared-enhanced (visible, shortwave-IR, and near-IR)                           [acquired August 9, 2009]

natural-color                                                                                           [acquired August 9, 2009]

Cool, wet weather over the second weekend of August moderated fire activity in interior Alaska. When the skies cleared on August 9, 2009, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured these images. Fires that had been churning out thick clouds of smoke the previous week were quiet; according to the daily situation report from the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center on August 11, 2009, however, the fires were still smoldering.

The top image is an infrared-enhanced view of the area at the confluence of the Tanana River with the Yukon, west of Fairbanks, made from a combination of visible, shortwave-infrared, and near-infrared light. Vegetation is bright green, water is dark blue (nearly black in marsh pools), and burned areas are brick red. The largest fire in the state, the Railbelt Complex, is partially hidden by clouds at image right. The lower image shows a natural-color (photo-like) view of the area. The muddy waters of the two rivers are light brown, and different kinds of vegetation, including spruce forests and muskeg, appear in shades of green. The burned areas are dark brown. NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.

Fires in Interior Alaska [acquired August 3, 2009]

Red flag warnings, cautioning residents that weather conditions were dangerously favorable for the rapid growth of wildfires, were in place for much of eastern Alaska on August 3, 2009, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image. Places where the sensor detected actively burning fires are marked with red dots. Hundreds of thousands of acres were burning at the time of this image. The largest fire, the Railbelt Complex, had grown to more than 481,000 acres as of August 4, and the southern perimeter of the fire was active along a 12-mile front, according to the morning situation report from the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center.

The large image provided above is at MODIS’ maximum spatial resolution (level of detail). Twice-daily images of interior Alaska are available from the MODIS Rapid Response Team in additional resolutions and formats, including a false-color version that highlights the location of burn scars and georeferenced images that can be used in Google Earth.  NASA images courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team. All captions by Rebecca Lindsey.

Related Links:

• Alaska on Fire
• First the Beetles Attacked!

• Warmer temperatures destroy forests faster

• 3 million acres of spruce killed in Alaska in 15 years
• British Columbia Forests Plagued by Beetle
• Drunken Forest

• California ‘Mojavefied’ by 2011?

• Ice Melt in Alaska, Antarctica, Greenland Accelerating
• Canada’s Ice Shelves Lose Quarter of their Cover
• Arctic ice cover second-lowest on record

• Arctic Tundra 4ºC Hotter Since 1970
• US Impacts of Global Climate Change
• Earth’s scars of human destruction visible: astronaut

• Index of Human Impact on Nature (HIoN) March 2008
• Marsification of Earth
• Earth’s Collapsing Life Support Systems

• The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities
• Nuking Earth for Lifestyle
• Giga Trends
• The Fate of Energy Dinosaurs
• 286W

• The Root Cause Matrix
• The Economy
• Collapsing Ecosystems

• Index page for Alaska: Environmental issues, Big Oil, politics, CORRUPTION, Sarah Palin, even the moose, beluga whale and polar bear …

Warmer temperatures destroy forests faster

Warmer temperatures are destroying trees in the western United States and Canada twice as fast as they did in the 1980s

1. Researchers from the U.S. and Canada say prolonged droughts and warmer temperatures, which  help pine beetles and other organisms to destroy trees, seem to be quickening the pace of the forests death.

2. “Average temperature in the West rose by more than 1 degree F [1.8ºF=1ºC] over the last few decades,” said Phillip van Mantgem of the U.S. Geological Survey, who participated in the study.

Gray, needleless limber pine, the likely victims of drought, interspersed with orange, dead limber and ponderosa pine killed by Rocky Mountain pine beetles in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park are seen in this undated  photo. REUTERS/Jeremy Smith/University of Colorado handout.

3. “While this may not sound like much, it has been enough to reduce winter snowpack, cause earlier snowmelt, and lengthen the summer drought.”

4. The study, which was published in the journal Science reports that different species of trees of varying ages and sizes are dying quicker, regardless of forest elevation.

5. The reports findings are consistent with  other research and observation, including the destruction of about 1.5 million hectares of pine forest by mountain pine bark beetles in northwestern Colorado, Reuters reported.

6. “We need to consider developing land-use policies that reduce the vulnerability of people and resources to wildfires,” Thomas Veblen of the University of Colorado said.

7. “Activities include reducing residential development in or near wildland areas that are naturally fire-prone and where we expect fire risk to increase with continued warming.”

8. “We may only be talking about an annual tree mortality rate changing from 1 percent a year to 2 percent a year, an extra tree here and there,” Mark Harmon, a professor of forest ecology at Oregon State University said.

9. “Forest fires or major insect epidemics that kill a lot of trees all at once tend to get most of the headlines. What we’re studying here are changes that are much slower and difficult to identify, but in the long run extremely important.”

Related Links:

• 3 million acres of spruce killed in Alaska in 15 years
• British Columbia Forests Plagued by Beetle
• Drunken Forest

• California ‘Mojavefied’ by 2011?

• Ice Melt in Alaska, Antarctica, Greenland Accelerating
• Canada’s Ice Shelves Lose Quarter of their Cover
• Arctic ice cover second-lowest on record

This post:  385 words, 9 paragraphs, 1 image, 1 caption, 7 links