“Only rain can put out these fires,” said Chukrov. “This year, we have no rain.”
The tundra is also on fire just outside Russkoye Ustye, said the village chief, Mr. Portnyagin. The settlement is one of the best-known outposts in Russia because ethnic Russians settled there, near the coast of the Arctic Ocean, in the 16th or 17th century.
However, the oldest buildings in the village have collapsed into the river for the past three decades as a result of erosion caused by the melting of permafrost, he said. Other changes appeared more recently: In the past five years, you began to notice bird species that had never flown so far north before.
For the second year in a row, Portnyagin said, the area around the town was no longer snowmobileable in June. The tundra flowers that normally bloom in mid to late July are already in bloom.
Village residents, unaccustomed to the heat, are developing headaches and skin problems because of that, Portnyagin said.
The normally abundant fish have descended to the depths due to the warm water, he said, so “the fishermen are suffering.”
Three hundred miles to the east, where the Kolyma River empties into the Arctic Ocean, indigenous reindeer herders have also seen their seasonally regulated way of life scrambled by climate change. The river’s ice broke earlier than usual this year, and migratory birds arrived earlier than usual. Unknown plants are growing in the tundra.
“Everything is changing in some way,” said Pyotr Kaurgin, the leader of an indigenous community in the area. “Old men used to predict what summer would be like and what winter would be like. We can no longer say for sure. “
Oleg Matsnev contributed to the investigation.
