For the first time in history, the North Pole has seen smoke from wildfires, according to NASA.

  • Yes, that means Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus and Frosty the Snowman are all catching smoke right now.

Why did the wildfires reach the North Pole?

Wildfires from Russia have caused wildfire smoke to creep up toward the North Pole. In fact, the North Pole isn’t the only cold spot to get hit with the wildfire smoke. The Sakha Republic in Siberia — one of the coldest areas of the world — has seen forests burn from wildfires, according to The Guardian.

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  • In fact, the smoke has been so bad that the sun was blacked out this week, per CBS News.
  • “There have always been large fires in Siberia. It is a landscape evolved to burn,” Jessica McCarty, an earth scientist at Miami University in Ohio, told NASA, per CBS News. “What is different because of climate change is that fires are burning larger areas, affecting places farther to the north, and consuming fuels that would have been more fire resistant in the past.”

What caused the wildfires?

Per The Guardian, environmentalists blame authorities, who have allowed the fires to burn because there is a law that allows them “not to intervene if the cost of fighting fires is greater than the damage caused or if they do not affect inhabited areas.”

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The wildfires come after the United Nations released a report that said human actions have warmed the planet, and “widespread and rapid changes” have happened.

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