Alexander Bedritsky, the Kremlin's weather adviser, also cited other disasters that he believes may be related to rising world temperatures, including Pakistan's worst floods in recorded history, and France's 2003 heat wave, which killed 15,000 people.
Taken together, they “are signs of global warming,” Bedritsky, who also serves as president the World Meteorological Organization, said at a news conference.
US climate change envoy Jonathan Pershing also recently said that such weather disasters are the kind of changes that could be the result of climate change.
Russian firefighters, meanwhile, have succeeded in pushing back some of the country's wildfires, and meteorologists said a cold front was advancing from the northwest that would hit the Moscow region Monday, bringing heavy rains and colder temperatures.
Five-hundred blazes were still burning in Russia, but the amount of land on fire fell 15 percent in the last 24 hours, the Emergency Situations Ministry said Monday. The area covered by fires around Moscow also has nearly halved in size over the past two days, it said.
Russia's heat wave — unprecedented in 130 years of record keeping — has sparked thousands of fires, most of them in western Russia. Heat and acrid smog from the fires also blanketed Moscow for a week this month, doubling the number of recorded deaths in the city. More than 50 people have died in the wildfires across Russia, and more than 2,000 homes have been destroyed.
The blazes and drought also have cost Russia one-third of its wheat crop, prompting the government to ban wheat exports through the end of the year in a move that has sent world grain prices to new highs
