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Russia’s forests play an important role in the global carbon cycle. Because of their scale
and interannual variability, forest fires can change the direction of the net carbon flux over
Eurasia. 2002 and 2003 were the first two consecutive years in the atmospheric record in which
the carbon content rose by more than 2 ppm per year. Northern Hemisphere fires could be the
reason. We show that 2002 and 2003 were the two years with the largest fire extent in Central
Siberia since 1996 using new measurements of burned forest area in Central Siberia derived
from remote sensing. To quantify the relationship between Siberian forest fires and climate
variability, we compare these measurements with time-series of large-scale climatic indices for
the period 1992 – 2003. This paper is amongst the first studies that analyse statistical
relationships between interannual variability of forest fires in Russia and climate indices.
Significant relationships of annual burned forest area with the Arctic Oscillation, summer
temperatures, precipitation, and the El Niño index NINO4 were found (p<0.1). In contrast, we
find no significant relation with the El Niño indices NINO1, NINO3 or SOI (p>0.1). Interannual
forest fire variability in Central Siberian could best be explained by a combination of the Arctic
Oscillation index and regional summer temperatures (r2=0.80).