Climate change: Russia is heating up almost twice as fast the world, warns scientist

By Elena Teslova

MOSCOW (AA) – Climate change is significantly impacting Russia as its territory is heating up at almost twice the global rate of warming, according to a leading Russian climate scientist.

The Far North region of Russia is heating up the fastest, said Sergey Semenov, scientific director of the Institute of Global Climate and Ecology in Moscow.

Average annual global surface temperature, both land and sea, increased by 0.179 degrees Celsius (0.322 degrees Fahrenheit) every decade from 1976 to 2020, while temperatures over land increased by 0.295C (0.531F), he said.

“Russia’s territory, however, has been warming almost twice as fast as land globally – at 0.51C (0.91F) per decade,” Semenov said.

The fastest temperature increase has been in the Taymyr Peninsula, Russia’s largest peninsula located in the Far North, which forms the northernmost part of the Eurasia mainland, he said.

Over the past 10 years, the average temperature there has risen by 0.8C (1.4F) to 1.2C (2.1F), he said.

The average annual temperature in the Taymyr Peninsula has been increasing 2.5 to 2.8 times faster than the global average and scientists expect this trend to continue, according to Semenov.

The picture is more complex when it comes to precipitation in Russia, he said.

“The general trend is an increase in precipitation, but there is a noticeable decrease in annual precipitation in the north of Western Siberia and the Far East,” he explained.

“Summer precipitation is also decreasing in these regions. Unfortunately, this is also the case in the south of the European part of Russia and Siberia, where the country’s crop farms are located.”

Due to Russia’s size, precipitation ranges vary in different parts of the country, from 200 to 300 millimeters per year in the semi-desert areas of the Caspian lowland to 1,600 millimeters on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, said Semenov.

The most significant changes have been seen in the Asian part of Russia, where precipitation increased by 2.3% in 10 years, much higher than the 1% mark that meteorologists consider significant.

Precipitation is decreasing in the Bay of Ob area, the east of the Arctic coast of the Asian part of Russia, and the Volga district, he said.

- Snow cover and extreme heat

The height of the snow cover is decreasing in many areas, including Russia’s European part, which is particularly unfavorable for agriculture, said Semenov.

“About two-thirds of Russia’s territory is under permafrost conditions. The warming is disrupting the thermal regime of its upper layer, increasing soil temperatures and the depth of seasonal thawing,” he explained.

“This reduces the reliability of foundations for residential buildings and technical structures. New building codes and regulations, which usually increase construction costs, are becoming necessary under these conditions.”

Russia has also been experiencing waves of extreme heat, with prolonged spells of dry and hot weather affecting human lives and creating conditions for more intense forest and wildfires, the scientist said.

In 2023, 71 extremely hot days were recorded in Russian cities, when the average daily temperature was higher than 90% of observations for the same months from 1981 to 2010.

The longest heat waves were in Kazan (14 days), Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (13 days), and Astrakhan (12 days).

The greatest number of extremely hot days were in Novosibirsk and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (13 days each), Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (11 days), and Vladivostok, Magadan, Murmansk and Naryan-Mar (10 days each).

This extreme heat is increasing the danger of climate-related diseases and infections, warned Semenov.

The carriers of some dangerous diseases, such as ixodes ticks, are climate dependent, he explained, adding that warmer temperatures are pushing up the probability of the spread of “diseases like ixodes tick-borne borreliosis and tick-borne viral encephalitis.”

- An economic silver lining?

Semenov pointed out that Russia could also stand to benefit from the current warming trends.

For instance, the ice cover along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) will decrease, potentially enhancing its economic use, he said.

From 2012 to 2022, the area of ice in the Arctic decreased by about 13%, directly affecting Russia as some 18% of its territory is in the region.

The Arctic is rich in mineral reserves and home to the NSR, which is the shortest shipping route between the western part of Europe and Asia.

The melting ice could open avenues for development in this territory, removing obstacles for sea navigation and mining of natural resources, said the scientist.

“The heat is increasing and opening up new opportunities for crop production. The longer warm spells are beneficial for a wider range of plants,” he added.

Semenov emphasized the need for global climate justice, calling for concrete steps and stressing the importance of “avoiding misleading global estimates.”

“Scientists often say global agricultural productivity will increase with a 1C to 2C (1.8F to 3.6F) rise in average global temperature, but this is a generalization as productivity could increase in some countries and drop in others,” he said.

Humanity may need to develop a general idea of the proportions on which to focus when it comes to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to a changing climate, Semenov added.

“This proportion should be determined based on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals for all countries, which is an extremely difficult task. Solving the climate problem is only one of the goals of sustainable development,” he concluded.