What Climate Change will Bring to Us?

The Russian President approved the Strategy for Development of the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation and national security for the period up to 2020. The main national priority of the document is industrialization of the Arctic and increased use of its carbon resources rather than conservation of vulnerable Arctic environment, protection of indigenous northern peoples and adaptation of the region to climate change.

Climate change affects the seasons and the severity of the influenza epidemics, as proved by researchers from the University of Arizona. If the climate situation will evolve in the same direction, risks to human health will become stronger: epidemics will become more long-lasting, intense and will start earlier than usual.

According to researchers at National Center for Atmospheric Research, climate change is occurring according to the worst scenarios. Representatives of Russian non-governmental environmental organizations believe that rapid climate challenges require quick response. They are sure that the Russian Federation, being one of the world's major emitters, need to urgently adopt a national strategic goal for 2050: reducing emissions by at least 50% of 1990 levels for all sources and sinks.

Reputed U.S. institutions: NASA Institute for Space Studies and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project published the latest data on the anomaly weather phenomena, which became more frequent, associated with climate changes. This document is an irrefutable argument in favor of the concept that only intensive efforts on reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere can save the humanity.

Specialists from the RAS Obukhov Institute of Physics of the Atmosphere (IFA RAS) presented a climate model for the three next centuries. The Russian scholars not only agreed with the world scholars’ conclusions regarding the upcoming global warming but also proposed a hypothesis that land-based ecosystems will soon start emitting carbon dioxide instead of absorbing it as is the case now.

The recent cataclysms in the south of Russia happened to be the most powerful in the entire history of observation. Total volume of one-day precipitations amounted to a monthly volume of precipitations in Thailand famous for its rainfall seasons. The majority of experts link the situation with the process of current global climate changes.

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) presented in late November the scientific report "Food safety, agriculture and climate change by 2050: scenarios, forecasts and policy recommendations." The scientists conclude that Russia will suffer from the lack of adaptation of the agricultural sector to climate change.

Russia's vast permafrost areas may shrink by a third by the middle of the century due to global warming, endangering infrastructure in the Arctic zone, an emergencies ministry official said Friday.

Roshydromet (Federal Service on hydrometeorology and monitoring of the environment of the Russian Federation) has published the official report on specific features of climate in the Russian Federation in 2010. The report contains the data on anomalies of climate parameters and on extreme weather and climate events.

On January 14, 2011, British Petroleum (BP) and the largest Russian oil company Rosneft signed an agreement on co-operation in development of three oil fields in the Russian Arctic shelf. A catastrophe in the Arctic, even ten times smaller than what happened in the Gulf of Mexico, with high probability will have dire consequences for the nature of the Arctic ecosystems and seriously contribute in global climate change.