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Warming in Yakutia slows down over recent decade — researchers

From the 1960s, the average annual temperature throughout Yakutia has grown from two to three degrees

YAKUTSK, November 8. /TASS/. Scientists of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Permafrost Institute and specialists of the North-Eastern Federal University during a complex expedition on Yakutia researched the climate change there. Results of the work show that within the recent decade, the warming there has slowed down, and every second meteorology station reports lowered average annual temperatures, the University's head of the laboratory of landscapes Yuri Danilov told TASS on Wednesday.

"From the 1960s, the average annual temperature throughout Yakutia has grown from two to three degrees, but during the recent ten years the climate has stabilized there - the warming is not that quick now and it is only tenth or hundredths of a degree, and at the 25th and 45th meteorology stations we have even fixed the average annual temperatures have lowered," the scientist said.

According to him, the warming has many reasons, and its stabilizing is a result of the nature's self-regulation and of the cyclic origin of the processes influencing the climate.

"As the climate gets warmer, we can see growing vegetation processes, mosses get higher, leaves get thicker, their insulation abilities are growing, and the permafrost melts less. It is a process of self-regulation. But under forests, the melting has not reached the ice wedges, while they already happen in the open areas - both melting and soil subsidence are much quicker there," he said.

Studies of Yakutia's climate and its influence on natural complexes and on life of the local people - is a direction of the Second complex expedition in Yakutia. The first expedition lasted from the mid 1920s.