| Summary: | Many regions of the world have experienced an increased incidence of extreme weather in recent years. This year, the most serious drought since 1939 hit the United States of America, while in 2011 the state Texas was affected by record wildfires in consequence of exceptional drought. The summer of 2012 has proven to be the most severe wildfire season Russia has faced in a decade. Unlike 2010, when severe fires raged in western Russia because of extreme temperature and prolong heat waves, most of the fires in 2012 have burned through taiga in remote parts of eastern and central Siberia. More than 17,000 wildfires had burned more than 30 million hectares (74 million acres) through August 2012. However, it is not only a temperature what seems to be more extreme, but also the water cycles related phenomena. Devastating torrential rainfall has become more frequent, and moreover in terms of total amount of water, they have also reached more extreme values. Disturbed and unbalanced temporal and spatial distribution of rainfall caused a high number of disastrous floods in recent years. In 2010 disastrous floods affected more than 20 million people in Pakistan and at the turn of 2010/11 the widespread floods occurred in state of Queensland, in Australia, where the region of total area of France and Germany combined was stricken. The British Islands experienced the wettest summer since 1912 this year, while the worst flash-floods in 60 years hit the capital city of China, Beijing.
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