Rising Temperature of Ukraine due to Russia-Ukraine war 2022

World is currently witnessing the military operations of Russia on invading Ukraine leading to missile bombing and shelling on various parts. Although the economic ill effects are more conspicuous and is much talked about but the environmental impacts are rather grimmer and more devastating but ironically is less in news. This bombing and shelling lead to increase in temperature and decrease in the vegetation cover of the bombed region. Hence in this work we had focussed on the environmental impact of the Russia-Ukraine crisis by quantifying the increase in temperature using Land surface temperature (LST) and decrease in vegetation using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) between 2021 and 2022.

We used NASA MODIS FIRMS data points from 23rd February 2022 to 27th July 2022 to prepare the heat map for identifying the regions heavily devastated by bombing. Thus, parts of Kiev, Lviv, Luhansk, Odessa, Chernivtsi and Kherson etc. in Ukraine were chosen for assessing the LST and NDVI variations between 24th February to 30th June of both 2021 and 2022. Whereas Minsk (Belarus), Ulanskiy (Kazakhstan), Warsaw (Poland), and Budapest (Hungary) etc. were chosen outside Ukraine for comparison. We used MODIS Terra data of LST and Emissivity having spatial resolution of 1 km, whereas for determining the changes in NDVI we have used MODIS Terra Vegetation Indices having spatial resolution of 250 m.

The results of the LST showed an average increase of 2.65°C between 2021 and 2022 in cities of Ukraine whereas the change in LST for cities outside Ukraine was found to be less than 0.2°C. For the locations in the cities of Ukraine where the NDVI value was greater than 0.4, the average value of NDVI for 2021 was found to be around 0.51, while for 2022 it decreased and was around 0.34. Whereas, for the cities outside Ukraine, there is increase in average NDVI values from 20221 to 2022. The results are worrisome in purview of the unprecedented rise in temperature in Western Europe. Sooner or later these heat waves will grip Ukraine and would cause menace due to the cumulative effect of heat waves and aftermaths of war. This would be catastrophic as it might lead to widespread impact on human health, agricultural yield and infrastructure to name a few. Thus, immediate actions must be taken to reduce the temperature rise and increase the vegetation cover.