Historic first: Smoke from Siberian wildfires reaches North Pole

For the first time in recorded history, wildfire smoke has reached the North Pole.

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According to a news release, NASA said data captured by satellites flying over Russia’s Sakha Republic on Friday revealed the amount of smoke from multiple blazes in one of the coldest areas in the world.

The images were taken from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), CTV reported.

The smoke is blanketing the sky above the Siberian region for about 2,000 miles from east to west and about 2,500 miles from north to south, according to NPR.

In some areas, the smoke was so bad that it blacked out the sun, according to CBS News, which cited a report from the Guardian newspaper.

According to NASA’s news release, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that smoke from Siberia clouded parts of Mongolia, including its capital, UIan Bator. By Friday, a broad band of smoke could be seen over western Greenland and the Canadian province of Nunavut.

“There have always been large fires in Siberia. It is a landscape evolved to burn,” Jessica McCarty, an earth scientist at Miami University in Ohio, told NASA’s Earth Observatory. “What is different because of climate change is that fires are burning larger areas, affecting places farther to the north, and consuming fuels that would have been more fire resistant in the past.”

By Sunday, 155 active wildfires were still burning in the region, while two villages totaling 3,200 residents had to be evacuated, CTV reported.

NASA’s statement comes after a report by the United Nations released on Monday, warning that climate change, caused by human actions like greenhouse gas emission, is nearing catastrophic levels, NPR reported.

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