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

Most of the blazes are in a region that saw possibly the hottest-ever temperature above the Arctic Circle this month.

Gallery | The fires, which were swept in from Mongolia by high winds, have caused almost $9.4 million in damage.

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

Russia's Aerial Forest Protection Service is trying to suppress 136 fires over 43,000 hectares. Firefighters are using explosives to contain the fires and seeding clouds with silver iodide to encourage rain.

Russian weather officials and environmentalists have said climate change is a major factor behind the increase in fires.

Photos of Yugorsk and other cities showed residential buildings fuzzy under a blanket of white smog.

Wildfires in Russia have burned across a combined area the size of Greece so far in 2020, surpassing official estimates threefold. Experts warn that this year’s blazes could become the most destructive in history.

Abnormally hot May weather resembles midsummer with air temperatures as high as +35C.

Wildfires on permafrost are ravaging Yakutia - or the Sakha Republic - the largest and coldest entity of the Russian Federation. The scale is mesmerizing. There are some 300 separate fires, now covering 12,140 square kilometers - but only around half of these are being tackled, because they pose a threat to people. The rest are burning unchecked.

At least 90 left homeless in one village after raging infernos, say reports.

Even school children are in firefighting brigades in some areas of Yakutia.

This time weather experts think the blackout was caused by smoke from wildfires mixing with heavy rain clouds.

Omsk region reported ‘record high’ number of wildfires and cases of dry grass burning, that turn into wildfires this spring, with one day last week counting nearly a thousand new events a day. Omsk region emergency services said the number of wildfires is seven to ten times above the norm.

Wildfires ablaze early in year due to lack of snow, posing threat to railway in Russian Far East.

Some 5.4 million hectares of land are ablaze across Russia, mostly in Siberia and the country's far east. Water sprayed by planes to fight the fires is ‘now as expensive as Champagne’.

Some 784,931 hectares of wildfires are raging on permafrost zones including the Arctic in Yakutia - officially Sakha Republic - and the Khanty-Mansi autonomous region, causing possibly irreparable damage to the tundra. Other infernos are sweeping through boreal forests which are known as the lungs of the Northern Hemisphere.

The blaze was the fourth such incident in the last one month, as Delhi’s landfills are catching fire due to heavy build up of methane between the layers of millions of tonnes of garbage and high temperatures the city. Local residents said small fires keep erupting in the huge mountain of waste, but they have not seen such a massive one that broke out on Tuesday night.

Cries to urgently call state of emergency in Irkutsk region as it chokes in smoke.

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.