Yakutsk

Permafrost contains microbes, mammoths, and twice as much carbon as Earth’s atmosphere. What happens when it starts to melt?

The world’s coldest city is on course to be up to 20C milder than usual for this time of year, says the scientific director of Russia's Hydrometeorological Center, Roman Vilfand. The streams of warm air from the south and west determine this situation.

The driest summer in 150 years has turned Yakutia into a tinderbox and seen wildfires tear through the region.

The lengthy wildfire season follows a record-hot Arctic summer. People living in Yakutsk are waking up to heavy smog brought from the wildfires raging to the west, east and north; struggling to breathe and with head, eye and throat aches.

Gallery | The forest fires have covered an area larger than Greece and are emitting black smog that harms nearby populations.

Usually one of the most full flowing in Russia, the river tends to drop the level twice a year - but not by a catastrophic 2-2.5 meters as this year.

Global warming is shrinking the permanently frozen ground across Siberia, disrupting everyday life in one of the coldest inhabited places on earth.

Thick ice and heavy spring floods combines to cause severe flooding in Yakutia. Specialists numbering around 100 have been moved from Baikal Search and Rescue Unit (Irkutsk region) and the Siberian Rescue Centre (Novosibirsk region) have been moved the the stricken region.

Fires have wreaked havoc this summer with Yakutia and the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous the latest to be hard hit.

In Yakutia, just a few meters separate summer from winter. There are places here where you can always build a snowman or taste fresh snowflakes.

Russian planes seeded clouds to bring down rain on huge wildfires raging in the Siberian region of Yakutia that in one place spread dangerously close to a hydroelectric power plant, authorities said on Monday.

MOSCOW — Summer wildfires have already produced a record amount of carbon emissions in Russia’s Siberian region of Yakutia, with still more weeks of the fire season to come, according to the European Union’s Copernicus satellite monitoring unit. Environmentalists fear the fires, fuelled by hot weather, may thaw Siberian permafrost and peatlands, releasing even more