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STORY: :: Sakha Yakutia Republic, Russia

Russia's state forest agency said it was fighting 222 separate wildfires across 20 regions, as an unusually hot summer fuels the blazes.

:: What is fueling Russia's forest fires?

Though wildfire is a natural part of the Arctic tundra and Russia's boreal forest ecosystems, climate change is altering the frequency and scale of Arctic-boreal wildfires in recent years.

:: Bonn, Germany

PARRINGTON: "All of these fires have been occurring where we can see that there's drier soil moisture anomalies than average and there's warmer surface air temperatures in those regions, than average."

Mark Parrington is a senior scientist with the European Union's Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service in Bonn, Germany.

"...we've seen over several years we've been putting together in the European State of the Climate, maps that compare the soil moisture anomalies for the summer with the observed fire locations. And in each of those reports it shows that most of the fires are occurring where there's this drier surface conditions and warmer temperatures."

:: How are Siberia's fires impacting humans?

The areas where the fires are burning are sparsely populated. But the impacts can still strike people living far away as the fires are driving increased smoke and carbon emissions.

"The impacts of those fires do not stay necessarily in those regions. We're seeing from in eastern Russia, since the beginning of July up to now, a smoke plume that's persisted that's stretching from northeast China, all the way up to the Arctic Ocean. And so, you know, it's a couple of hundred million square kilometers this smoke, so there's air quality impacts."

:: What is the wildfire forecast for summer 2024?

"Summer 2024 will be one of the higher years for fire emissions for both eastern Russia and for North America. But yeah, we have to wait and see just how extreme it's going to be compared to the previous extremes that we've been monitoring in recent years."

One independent environmental group said that official data showed that more than 21 million acres had been destroyed so far this season, adding that 2024 is on track to be worse than the fire seasons of the last two years.