‘Airpocalypse’-
“Santa Claus isn’t supposed to see smoke. For the first time in recorded history, hazy smoke from raging wildfires in the Arctic has reached the North Pole.”
The following written content by Mark Puleo
Santa Claus isn’t supposed to see smoke. For the first time in recorded history, hazy smoke from raging wildfires in the Arctic has reached the North Pole, and NASA satellites have the images to prove it.
On Aug. 6, the space agency’s MODIS, an imaging sensor on the Aqua satellite, captured true-color images of what NASA called a “vast, thick, and acrid blanket of smoke” that clouded the North Pole. The smoke originated from enormous blazes in the Siberian region of northern Russia.
According to China’s Xinhua news agency, the Mongolian capital city of Ulaanbaatar was blanketed in “white smoke,” NPR reported. The republic of Yakutia – home to Oymyakon, the coldest inhabited place on Earth – has also been shrouded in smoke, as captured by MODIS images on Aug. 8.
Satellite imagery from NASA shows smoke from wildfires in the Siberian region of Russia have reached the North Pole in what the agency is calling “a first in recorded history.” (NASA)
The thick smoke in Yakutia sent air quality measurements in recent weeks plummeting to an extreme category dubbed “airpocalypse,” a category described by officials to have “immediate and heavy effects on everybody,” The Guardian reported.
In the images captured on Aug. 6, that “airpocalypse” inducing smoke was shown to have traveled 1,864 miles from Yakutia to the North Pole, according to NASA.
“The smoke, which was so thick that most of the land below was obscured from view, stretches about 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from east to west and 2,500 miles (4,000 km) from south to north,” the agency wrote. “But it captures only a small part of the smoke from the Russian fires.” Read more from AccuWeather.
