AFP UK

President Vladimir Putin on Saturday said the scale of natural disasters that have hit Russia this year is “absolutely unprecedented” as local officials ask for Moscow’s help to tackle fires and floods.

A former skeptic of man-made climate change, the Russian leader called on authorities to do everything possible to help Siberians affected by the region’s gigantic wildfires, as well as Russians living in the flood-hit south of the country. 

Speaking at a video conference with the leaders of the affected eastern and southern regions, Putin said he received daily reports on the climate situation in the country. 

“In the south (of Russia), the monthly norm of rainfall now falls in a few hours and in the Far East on the contrary, forest fires in drought conditions are spreading rapidly,” Putin said. 

In Russia’s largest and coldest region of Yakutia, this summer’s forest fires have already burned through an area larger than Portugal. 

Russian weather officials and environmentalists have linked the increasing intensity of Siberia’s annual fires to climate change. 

“All of this once again shows how important it is for us to deeply and systematically work on the climate and environment agenda,” he said.

He called on authorities to be ready to evacuate more people living in areas affected by the fires — especially the elderly — as well as provide economic support for them. 

He also asked officials to calculate the effects of the fires and make plans to reconstruct houses. 

The Russian leader said it was important to do everything to “save the forest riches” and “minimise damage for animals of the taiga”, a word used to describe northern Russian forests. 

– Hundreds evacuated –

Local officials pleaded for reinforcements and Moscow’s economic help to deal with the human cost of damage caused by extreme weather. 

Aysen Nikolayev, the head of Yakutia, said firefighters were able to save 230 houses from flames. 

He said evacuated villagers had received psychological help, with local children being sent to holiday camps. 

He called the scale of the fires a first “in history” and asked for help after the region’s harvest was severely affected. 

“We will continue to save more houses,” he said, thanking Putin for his support. 

This week Russia launched a national response centre and deployed additional firefighters to battle the devastating Siberian fires.

The governor of the southern Krasnodar region Veniamin Kondratyev said 132 people — mostly holidaymakers — had been evacuated in the Black Sea resort of Anapa last night amid rising floods.

“We could not predict what would happen at night,” he said, adding that the region had “the same rainfall in a day as we usually get in a year.” 

Kondratyev said that despite difficult climate conditions, the holiday season in resort areas is “continuing and under control.” 

The head of Moscow-annexed Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said that two people have died as a result of floods on the peninsula and that over 3,000 have asked authorities for help. 

Heavy smog hung over the regional capital of Yakutsk on Friday, which was declared a non-working day in much of the region over health concerns due to wildfire smoke. 

For years Putin was notorious for his scepticism about man-made global warming and saying Russia stands to benefit from it.

But in recent months he has also made statements to the effect that climate change is not just a boon to Moscow.

The Russian leader this year participated in a summit hosted by US President Joe Biden and said Moscow is interested in “stepping up international cooperation” on climate change.

Turkey battled disaster on two fronts Saturday with eight people dying in the crash a fire-fighting aircraft and rescuers racing to find survivors of flash floods in the north that have killed at least 44.

In Moscow, the defence ministry said all eight people on the Russian plane had perished on the fire-fighting mission.

The air tragedy came just as Turkey was gaining control over hundreds of wildfires that killed eight people and destroyed swathes of forest along the scenic southern coast.

Scientists believe such natural disasters are becoming more intense and frequent because of global warming caused by polluting emissions.

Turkey’s official disaster agency AFAD said teams were combing through the rubble of dozens of homes that collapsed due to the floods that hit Black Sea regions on Wednesday after heavy rains.

In Moscow, news agencies quoted the defence ministry as saying five Russian servicemen and three Turkish citizens were on board the Russian Be-200 plane that went down around 1330 GMT.

Television footage showed a column of smoke rising from the remote mountainous zone in the south of the country.

Turkey’s defence ministry issued a statement saying the aircraft on loan from Russia had taken off from Adana to help extinguish fires burning at Kahramanmaras.

A surveillance plane and a helicopter had been dispatched to the crash site, the ministry added.

Russian consular representatives and a defense ministry commission were reportedly on their way to the area.

– Combing rubble for survivors –

Turkey’s official disaster agency AFAD said teams were combing through the rubble of dozens of homes that collapsed due to the floods that hit Black Sea regions on Wednesday after heavy rains.

In the village of Babacay in the northern province of Sinop, 40 houses and two bridges were completely destroyed by the floods, according to state news agency Anadolu.

The latest official death toll published Saturday by AFAD stood at 44, with nine other people in hospital.

Scientists believe such natural disasters are becoming more intense and frequent because of global warming caused by polluting emissions.

Turkey’s emergence as a frontline country in the battle against climate change also poses a challenge to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan two years before the next scheduled general election.

As the initial shock of the floods faded, so questions and criticisms arose.

Floods survivors accused local authorities of not giving them proper warning about the dangers of incoming storms.

Criticism has also been levelled at the fact several buildings were built in flood zones.

In Bozkurt in Kastamonu province, one eight-storey building constructed on the banks of the Ezine river collapsed.

Footage shot by survivors showed furious river waters flooding the streets in just a few minutes, carrying off cars and traffic signs.

The government has denied that the sudden rise in water levels was linked to a hydro-electric power station further up the river, after media reported its water-retention dam may have ruptured.

July was the hottest month globally ever recorded, a US scientific agency said Friday, in the latest data to sound the alarm about the climate crisis.

“July is typically the world’s warmest month of the year, but July 2021 outdid itself as the hottest July and month ever recorded,” said Rick Spinrad, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

“This new record adds to the disturbing and disruptive path that climate change has set for the globe,” Spinrad said in a statement citing data from the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).

NOAA said combined land and ocean-surface temperature was 1.67 degrees Fahrenheit (0.93 degrees Celsius) above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees Fahrenheit, making it the hottest July since record-keeping began 142 years ago.

The month was 0.02 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the previous record set in July 2016, which was equaled in 2019 and 2020.

However according to data released by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, last month was the third warmest July on record globally.

Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute, said it is not unusual for agencies to have small differences in data.

“The NOAA record has more limited coverage over the Arctic than other global temperature records, which tend to show July 2021 as the second (NASA) or third (Copernicus) warmest on record,” Hausfather told AFP.

“But regardless of exactly where it ends up on the leaderboards, the warmth the world is experiencing this summer is a clear impact of climate change due to human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases,” he said.

“The extreme events we are seeing worldwide -– from record-shattering heat waves to extreme rainfall to raging wildfires –- are all long-predicted and well understood impacts of a warmer world,” he said.

“They will continue to get more severe until the world cuts its emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases down to net-zero.”

– ‘Sobering’ IPCC report –

Last week, a UN climate science report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provoked shock by saying the world is on course to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming around 2030.

“Scientists from across the globe delivered the most up-to-date assessment of the ways in which the climate is changing,” NOAA’s Spinrad said.

“It is a sobering IPCC report that finds that human influence is, unequivocally, causing climate change, and it confirms the impacts are widespread and rapidly intensifying.”

With only 1.1 degrees Celsius of warming so far, an unbroken cascade of deadly weather disasters bulked up by climate change has swept the world this summer, from asphalt-melting heatwaves in Canada, to rainstorms turning city streets in China and Germany into rivers, to untamable wildfires sweeping Greece and California. 

NOAA said the land-surface only temperature for the Northern Hemisphere was the highest ever recorded for July — 2.77 degrees Fahrenheit (1.54 degrees Celsius) above average, surpassing the previous record in 2012.

Asia had its hottest July ever, surpassing 2010, it said, while Europe had its second-hottest July, trailing only 2018.

The death toll from Turkey’s flash floods soared to at least 38 on Friday as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited one of the hardest-hit cities to lead a prayer for the victims and pledge government help.

The devastation across Turkey’s northern Black Sea regions came just as the disaster-hit country was gaining control over hundreds of wildfires that killed eight people and destroyed swathes of forest along its scenic southern coast.

In a provisional toll, the government’s disaster agency AFAD reported that 32 people had died in Kastamonu province, along the Black Sea, and that six others had lost their lives in the neighbouring area of Sinop. 

But an undetermined number of people have also been reported missing.

A previous spate of flooding killed six people last month in the northeastern province of Rize.

Scientists believe such natural disasters are becoming more intense and frequent because of global warming caused by polluting emissions.

Turkey’s emergence as a frontline country in the battle against climate change also poses a challenge to Erdogan two years before the next scheduled general election.

The powerful Turkish leader was roundly condemned on social media for tossing out bags of tea to locals while visiting one of the fire-ravaged areas at the end of July.

Polls indicate tackling climate change will be a top priority for up to seven million teens who will be eligible to vote for the first time when Erdogan seeks to extend his rule into a third decade.

Erdogan sounded both mournful and hopeful as he attended a funeral for the first victims and led a prayer before a few hundred residents in the inundated city of Kastamonu.

“We will do whatever we can as a state as quickly as we can, and rise from the ashes,” Erdogan told the crowd.

“We can’t bring back the citizens we lost, but our state has the means and power to compensate those who lost loved ones.”

– Building anger –

But anger appeared to be building in Black Sea towns and cities over what some said was a lack of proper warning from local officials about the dangers of the incoming storms.

“They told us to move our cars but they didn’t tell us to save ourselves or our children,” Kastamonu province resident Arzu Yucel told the private DHA news agency.

“If they had, I would have taken them and left in five minutes. They didn’t even tell us that the river was overflowing,” the elderly woman said.

Turkey’s rugged Black Sea coast is dotted with villages built along valleys that frequently experience heavy flooding in the summer months.

Some longtime residents of the region said this year’s flooding was the worst they could recall.

“I am 75 years old and have never seen anything like this,” Batin province resident Adem Senol told the Anadolu state news agency.

“The water rose higher than the level of our windows, it broke down our door, even a wall,” he said. “It was a powerful stream, enough to sweep away houses.”

Emergency services said waters briefly rose in some parts as high as four metres (13 feet) before subsiding and spreading across a region stretching more than 240 kilometres (150 miles) wide.

Images on social media showed bridges collapsing under the force of the rushing waters and roads buckling from mudslides.

Nearly 200 villages were still without electricity on Friday, the authorities said.

Footage captured on a phone showed one man standing on top of his car as it was being swept along by the current. He then vanished in the swirling waters when his vehicle hit a wall.

Weather services predicted rains to continue to lash the affected area for the remainder of the week.

July was the hottest month globally ever recorded, a US scientific agency said Friday, in the latest data to sound the alarm about the climate crisis.

“July is typically the world’s warmest month of the year, but July 2021 outdid itself as the hottest July and month ever recorded,” said Rick Spinrad, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

“This new record adds to the disturbing and disruptive path that climate change has set for the globe,” Spinrad said in a statement citing data from the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).

NOAA said combined land and ocean-surface temperature was 1.67 degrees Fahrenheit (0.93 degrees Celsius) above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees Fahrenheit, making it the hottest July since record-keeping began 142 years ago.

The month was 0.02 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the previous record set in July 2016, which was equaled in 2019 and 2020.

However according to data released by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, last month was the third warmest July on record globally.

Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute, said it is not unusual for agencies to have small differences in data.

“The NOAA record has more limited coverage over the Arctic than other global temperature records, which tend to show July 2021 as the second (NASA) or third (Copernicus) warmest on record,” Hausfather told AFP.

“But regardless of exactly where it ends up on the leaderboards, the warmth the world is experiencing this summer is a clear impact of climate change due to human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases,” he said.

“The extreme events we are seeing worldwide -– from record-shattering heat waves to extreme rainfall to raging wildfires –- are all long-predicted and well understood impacts of a warmer world,” he said.

“They will continue to get more severe until the world cuts its emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases down to net-zero.”

– ‘Sobering’ IPCC report –

Last week, a UN climate science report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provoked shock by saying the world is on course to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming around 2030.

“Scientists from across the globe delivered the most up-to-date assessment of the ways in which the climate is changing,” NOAA’s Spinrad said.

“It is a sobering IPCC report that finds that human influence is, unequivocally, causing climate change, and it confirms the impacts are widespread and rapidly intensifying.”

With only 1.1 degrees Celsius of warming so far, an unbroken cascade of deadly weather disasters bulked up by climate change has swept the world this summer, from asphalt-melting heatwaves in Canada, to rainstorms turning city streets in China and Germany into rivers, to untamable wildfires sweeping Greece and California. 

NOAA said the land-surface only temperature for the Northern Hemisphere was the highest ever recorded for July — 2.77 degrees Fahrenheit (1.54 degrees Celsius) above average, surpassing the previous record in 2012.

Asia had its hottest July ever, surpassing 2010, it said, while Europe had its second-hottest July, trailing only 2018.

Toxic substances emitted in Angola have turned a river red in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the environment minister said on Friday, warning of an “ecological catastrophe” as the pollution kills wildlife including hippos. 

This “discolouration would be caused by a toxic substance spill by an Angolan factory specialising in industrial diamond mining,” DR Congo Enviroment Minister Eve Bazaiba said in a statement.

Polluted tributaries are feeding into the Kasai river in the west of the vast central African country.

Local officials in the Kasai region said the dead bodies of hippos and fish had been found in the polluted waters, she said.

The Kasai feeds into the Congo River, the second longest African river after the Nile.

The situation is an “ecological catastrophe”, for the local populations, said Bazaiba.

The discolouration was “on the brink of reaching Kinshasa” where over 10 million people live, she added.

So far the exact nature of the toxic substances polluting the waterways is unknown. A team of environment ministry experts has been rushed to the area to collect samples of river water.

The death toll from Turkey’s flash floods soared to 31 on Friday as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited one of the hardest-hit cities to lead a prayer for the victims and pledge government help.

The devastation across Turkey’s northern Black Sea regions came just as the disaster-hit country was winning control over hundreds of wildfires that killed eight people and destroyed swathes of forest along its scenic southern coast.

A previous spate of flooding killed six people last month in the northeastern province of Rize.

Scientists believe such natural disasters are becoming more intense and frequent because of global warming caused by polluting emissions.

Turkey’s emergence as a frontline country in the battle against climate change also poses a challenge to Erdogan two years before the next scheduled general election.

The powerful Turkish leader was roundly condemned on social media for tossing out bags of tea to locals while visiting one of the fire-ravaged areas at the end of July.

Polls show climate warming being a top priority for up to seven million Generation Z teens who will be eligible to vote for the first time when Erdogan seeks to extend his rule into a third decade.

Erdogan sounded both mournful and hopeful as he attended a funeral for the first victims and led a prayer before a few hundred residents in the inundated city of Kastamonu.

“We will do whatever we can as a state as quickly as we can, and rise from the ashes,” Erdogan told the crowd.

“We can’t bring back the citizens we lost, but our state has the means and power to compensate those who lost loved ones.”

– Building anger –

But the anger appeared to be building in Black Sea towns and cities, over what some said was a lack of proper warning from local officials about the dangers of the incoming storms.

“They told us to move our cars but they didn’t tell us to save ourselves or our children,” Kastamonu province resident Arzu Yucel told the private DHA news agency.

“If they had, I would have taken them and left in five minutes. They didn’t even tell us that the river was overflowing,” the elderly woman said.

Turkey’s rugged Black Sea coast is dotted with villages built along valleys that frequently experience heavy flooding in the summer months.

Some longtime residents of the region said this year’s flooding was the worst they could recall.

“I am 75 years old and have never seen anything like this,” Batin province resident Adem Senol told the Anadolu state news agency.

“The water rose higher than the level of our windows, it broke down our door, even a wall,” he said. “It was a powerful stream, enough to sweep away houses.”

Emergency services said waters briefly rose in some parts as high as four metres (13 feet) before subsiding and spreading across a region stretching more than 150 miles (240 kilometres) wide.

Images on social media showed bridges collapsing under the force of the rushing waters and roads buckling from mudslides.

Footage captured on a phone showed one man standing on top of his car as it was being swept along by the current. He then vanished in the swirling waters when his vehicle hit a wall.

Concern was also rising over a likely higher death toll.

Some locals told Turkish media Friday that they still had no news from their closest family and friends.

Weather services predicted rains to continue to lash the affected area for the remainder of the week.

On the scorched earth, dozens of blackened rings mark all that remains of beehives that dotted the once verdant hillsides outside the village of Voutas on Greece’s Evia island.

Pine, walnut and fig trees were among the rich plant life sustaining the bees in a region that produces 40 percent of Greece’s honey. And those industrious workers were, in turn, a cornerstone of the local ecosystem, pollinating local farmers’ crops.

“It’s a whole way of life that we lost along with the forest,” says Babis, 53, whose main source of income was his hives.

“What are we going to find here next year? It’s over. We’ve gone from heaven to hell.”

Bee colonies that have been bred over decades, with skills passed down through generations, have been wiped out in a fury of wild fires billowed by the forces of climate change.

– ‘Too late for change’ –

Greece — along with Turkey, Italy, Spain and Algeria — has been hit by a savage fire season that Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis described as the “greatest ecological disaster in decades”.

“The climate crisis is a harsh reality and shows us that forests will become increasingly vulnerable and increasingly valuable for what they provide,” says Dimitris Karavellas, managing director for WWF Greece.

“The climate crisis is not an excuse to fail but must be a wake-up call for change.”

But for the beekeepers of Evia, it’s too late for change.

“We lost our hives because we were running to save our villages,” says Adonis Vakos, his cap pulled down on his head as he surveys the ruins of the charred forest before him.

Vakos, 49, the last representative of a family of beekeepers, says only 50 hives remain of the 130 he had before the fires swept across the island for nine days.

“I have been in the culture of honey since I was 10. We will never have time to revive it, we will be dead before it grows back. It will take 50 years, if it ever comes back.”

Until now, northern Evia has been one of the most popular areas in Greece for beekeepers.

Its micro-climate, biodiversity and pine forests caressed by the etesian summer breeze offered ideal conditions for the production of exceptional honey.

“Forty percent of the country’s honey production takes place here,” said Stathis Albanis, president of the local beekeepers’ cooperative.

Throughout the summer and up until November, thousands of Greek beekeepers brought their hives to the north of Evia island, says Panagiotis Gianakaras, a local beekeeper.

He managed to save his 80 beehives. The colourful wooden boxes sheltering their thousands of bees now rest in the shade of olive trees. 

– Forced migration –

But even for those fortunate enough to have saved their hives, the destruction of the forests — and the bees’ food source — means they are forced to look elsewhere.

“I am taking my beehives tomorrow to Pelion,” a mountainous peninsula north of Evia, says Adonis Angelou, who managed to save his 150 hives by using a tractor to clear flammable material and creating a fire-break around them.

“I rented land near Volos, it incurs new costs but I have no choice,” says Angelou.

“Fortunately I saved them. But how are the bees going to feed themselves? With charcoal?”

From rising sea levels to flash floods and unpredictable and more intense heatwaves, climate change will alter the nature of agriculture and force farmers to abandon once productive land, according to climate scientists.

“We will probably have to migrate too, and put our beehives in other regions,” says Vakos. 

“Look, there’s nothing green around us anymore. And a bee without greenery cannot survive.”

Devastating wildfires in Bolivia consumed 749,000 hectares from January to July, the Friends of Nature Foundation (FAN) NGO said on Thursday night.

FAN said it had used images from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite to study the damage.

As in neighboring Brazil, the fires have been aggravated by widespread deforestation aimed at expanding farming or pastureland.

The eastern Santa Cruz and northeastern Beni departments account for 94 percent of burnt areas, FAN said.

Up to the end of July, 137,000 hectares (3400,000 acres) had been burnt in Santa Cruz but the local governor said Thursday that figure had since passed 200,000.

Beni had registered 564,000 hectares of damage in the seven-month period.

Santa Cruz, which lies close to the border with Brazil, declared a “red alert” on Thursday.

“The red alert was declared because of the progressive increase in heat sources and because of the climactic conditions we’re facing,” said Yovenka Rosado, the coordinator for forest fires in Santa Cruz.

According to the FAN report, the vast majority of the burnt area was pastureland, shrubs and grasslands.

Just three percent was woodland while eight percent was land used for farming.

FAN estimates that more than 2.3 million hectares of forests and prairies were destroyed by fire in 2020 and 6.4 million hectares the year before.

Greece breathed a sigh of relief Friday after “mega fires” that have ravaged much of the country were brought under control, but firefighters elsewhere in southern Europe braced for fresh outbreaks.

The scorching temperatures across the Mediterranean have increased the risk of blazes, which have already devastated parts of Italy, Turkey, Algeria and Tunisia, with the bulk of Spain and Portugal’s regions put on high alert for wildfires.

Rising temperatures and increased dryness due to changing rainfall patterns have created the ideal conditions for forest fires, with the five-year period to 2019 “unprecedented” for fire, especially in Europe and North America, according to the World Meterological Organization (WMO).

Scientists say longer and more intense heatwaves due to climate warming are leading to out-of-control wildfires that inflict unprecedented material and environmental damage.

Although rain and a drop in temperatures helped firefighters in Greece gain a hold on the active fronts on the island of Evia and the Arcadia region, which have burned more than 100,000 hectares, winds forecast this weekend increased the likelihood of new flare-ups, authorities said.

The huge multinational force assisting Greece will remain in place, said civil protection spokesman Spyros Georgious. 

“They are helping to monitor the perimeters of burned areas in Evia and Arcadia, which are many kilometres long,” Georgious said. 

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has called the fires Greece’s “greatest ecological disaster in decades,” which he linked directly to climate change.

– ‘Difficult’ days ahead –

In Spain on Friday, firefighters managed to tame a blaze in the northeastern Catalonia region that forced the evacuation of a few dozen campers in a protected forest. 

But another fire continued to burn near the town of Rubia in the northwest, while temperatures in some southwestern provinces were expected to exceed 46 degrees Celsius (115 Fahrenheit).

In a sign of the potentially shifting front of Europe’s fires, three French Canadair aircraft that had been dispatched to Greece were redeployed to Sicily.

Firefighters have been carrying out hundreds of operations throughout the Italian island, as well as in the southern Calabria region. Meanwhile overnight, about 30 people were evacuated after a large fire broke out in a nature reserve near Tivoli, east of Rome.

Regional authorities on Sicily recorded Europe’s highest ever temperature on Wednesday, of 48.8 degrees Celsius, although this still has to be officially confirmed.

Scorching temperatures that have sent tourists in the major cities flocking to fountains and ice cream shops were forecast to continue into the weekend across Italy.

Bob Stefanski, the WMO’s head of applied climate services, said it was seeking to verify the Sicily record, adding: “We need to prepare for the eventuality for the records to be broken, with temperatures above 50 degrees Celsius in Europe in the future.”

In Portugal, the government placed 14 of the 18 regions under a fire alert, with Prime Minister Antonio Costa warning the next few days would be “difficult”.

The southern shore of the Mediterranean has not been spared, as firefighters have continued to battle blazes that already killed 71 people in northern Algeria. Dozens of fires have been recorded since Monday in Tunisia.

In Turkey, which has barely recovered from deadly fires, at least 27 people died in flooding in the north of the country.