Climate
I. I. Mokhov
A. M. Obukhov Institute
of Atmospheric Physics RAS
mokhov@ifaran.ru
This review presents results of the Russian studies of climate and its changes
(published in 2011–2014). Essential part of key results of climate change studies
with analysis of impacts for Russia during last years is given in [1–233]. Previous
similar review was published in [19, 23]. Information on climate studies in Rus‑
sia is published regularly in the bulletin “Climate Change” (http://meteorf.ru).
Various and detailed assessment of climate changes
and their impacts in Russian
regions was presented in [1].
Climate and its changes from observations,
reanalyses and paleoreconstructions
Significant climate anomalies and changes have been noted during last time
in various regions, including Russian regions [1–102]. In Russia, as a northern
country, the warming is much faster than for the Earth as a whole. In recent
decades, the rate of the surface warming in Russia in general was more than twice
higher than the global one. In some regions it was more than 4 times larger.
According to Roshydromet data (http://www.meteorf.ru) the trend of the annu‑
al-mean surface air temperature for Russia as a whole for the period 1976–2014
was equal to 0.42ºC/(10 years). Such a rapid warming in Russia is accompanied
by considerable interannual variability. The obtained linear trend is associated
with 40% of the variance of surface air temperature for Russia as a whole. The
highest rate of the surface air warming in recent decades was observed in the
Arctic regions up to 0.8 °C/(10 years) or more for annual means and up to 1 °C/
(10 years) or more for the seasonal means.
The tendency of increase in the number and intensity of regional hydromete‑
orological anomalies under general climate warming is noted, for Russian re‑
gions, in particular (http://www.meteorf.ru). The number of hazardous hydrome‑
teorological phenomena with significant economic and social damage was 2.4
times larger in Russia for the last five years (2010–2014) than for the last five
years at the end of the 20
th
century (1996–2000). The largest number of such
events was in 2012. Most often dangerous meteorological phenomena are ob‑
served in the summer months.
Particularly strong changes in climate have been noted in Arctic and subarc‑
tic latitudes, which are characterized by high variability and sensitivity to various