GRAMOTEINO, Russia (AFP) — More than 50 people were reported to have died Thursday after smoke filled a Siberian coal mine and a rescue effort ended in tragedy. Senior managers at the mine in Russia’s Kemerovo region had been detained for suspected safety violations, after the latest deadly accident to hit the country’s vast mining industry. Russian news agencies quoted local authorities as saying that 52 people were dead, including miners and six rescuers who […]
Tag: Siberia
In Siberia, a copper mine hopes to become a global energy pivot
by Andrea PALASCIANO Agence France-Presse UDOKAN, Russia (AFP) – In 1949, a Soviet expedition in Siberia was looking for uranium to supply the national nuclear arsenal when it stumbled on a vast deposit of copper. More than 70 years later, a mining complex in Russia’s Far East between Lake Baikal and the Pacific Ocean is finally due to launch operations next year. With copper key to the world’s energy transition away from carbon, the hope […]
Climate: summer wildfires emit record amount of CO2
by Marlowe HOOD Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) – Wildfires in Siberia, North America and around the Mediterranean caused record levels of planet-warming CO2 emissions this summer, the EU’s Earth monitoring service said Tuesday. Globally, forests going up in flames emitted more than 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2 — equivalent to India’s annual emissions from all sources — in July and August alone, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) reported. More than half of CO2 […]
Siberia feels the brunt of climate change as wildfires rage
by Evan GERSHKOVICH YAKUTSK, Russia (AFP) — Alexander Fyodorov peered out his office window towards the vast forests where wildfires had been raging for weeks around the Siberian city of Yakutsk. It was a rare day for this summer — for once the sky in the world’s coldest city was not shrouded in a sepia orange toxic smog, produced by the third straight year of increasingly massive blazes. In Yakutia, known as Sakha in its […]
Putin orders reinforcements to fight Siberia wildfires
MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered officials Tuesday to send in reinforcements to fight forest fires that continue to tear through Siberia. Wildfires have ripped through Siberia’s forests with growing intensity in recent years, which Russian weather officials and environmentalists have linked to climate change and underfunded forestry management services. Putin ordered Russia’s emergencies ministry to “increase the group for extinguishing fires” and “raise the intensity of the work of aviation” in […]
Russia probes pollution off Pacific coast after ‘ecological disaster’
MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Russian authorities Wednesday opened an investigation into suspected toxic waste pollution off the Kamchatka peninsula on its Pacific coast which has led to the mass death of marine animals. Locals sounded the alarm in late September as surfers experienced stinging eyes from the water and sea creatures including seals, octopuses and sea urchins washed up dead on the shore. The Russian branch of Greenpeace has described the situation as an “ecological […]
Tie for warmest June globally, Siberia sizzles: EU
by Marlowe HOOD PARIS, France (AFP) — Temperatures soared 10 degrees Celsius above average in June across much of permafrost-laden Siberia, with last month in a dead heat for the warmest June on record globally, the European Union’s climate monitoring network said Tuesday. An Arctic hourly temperature record for the month — 37 degrees Celsius — was set on June 21 near Verkhoyansk in northeastern Russia, where a weather station logged a blistering 38C on […]
Warmest May on record, Siberia 10C hotter
by Kelly MACNAMARA / Marlowe HOOD Agence France Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — Temperatures soared 10 degrees Celsius above average last month in Siberia, home to much of Earth’s permafrost, as the world experienceTemperatures soared 10 degrees Celsius above average last month in Siberia, home to much of Earth’s permafrost, as the world experienced its warmest May on record, the European Union’s climate monitoring network said Friday. The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said May […]
Russia struggles to clean up Arctic river fuel spill
by Maria ANTONOVA Agence France-Presse MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Russia on Thursday intensified efforts to clean up a major fuel spill that environmentalists say is the worst such accident in the Arctic, as investigators made their first arrest. A diesel reservoir collapsed at a power station outside the northern Siberian city of Norilsk on Friday, releasing 15,000 tonnes of fuel into a river and 6,000 tonnes into the soil, according to Russia’s state environmental watchdog. […]
Scientists warn of ‘zombie fires’ in the Arctic
by Marlowe HOOD Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — Dormant “zombie fires” scattered across the Arctic region — remnants of record blazes last year — may be coming to life after an unusually warm and dry Spring, scientists warned Wednesday. “We have seen satellite observations of active fires that hint that ‘zombie’ fires might have reignited,” said Mark Parrington, a senior scientist and wildfire expert at the European Union’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service. The hotspots, which […]
15 die in dam collapse at Siberian gold mine
by Anna SMOLCHENKO Agence France Presse MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — Fifteen people were killed and another 13 missing after an illegally built dam collapsed at a gold mine in a remote Siberian settlement on Saturday, in the latest deadly accident to hit Russia. The dam on the Seiba River in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk burst and flooded several cabins where the victims lived, Russian authorities said. Muddy flood waters hit the cabins near […]
‘Siberia is burning’: Russians choke on forest fire smog
by Ekaterina ANISIMOVA BOGUCHANY, Russia (AFP) — Svetlana Tuflyakova is in a hurry as she pushes her small son in his pram, keen to get back inside her house and away from the permeating smoke of Siberian wildfires: “It feels like it fills your whole body,” she says. Tuflyakova lives in the village of Boguchany in Krasnoyarsk region, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from raging fires which have engulfed vast territories and filled residential areas […]





