TOMSK, October 31. /TASS/. Scientists of the Tomsk State University (TSU) and the Tokyo Metropolitan University (TMU) will conduct large-scale research of the Altai Mountains and Arctic glaciers to see how they change in the global warming. Received information will be used to forecast floods, landslides and droughts that emerge from the Earth’s climate changes, the Tomsk University’s press service told TASS on Thursday.
"TSU and the Tokyo Metropolitan University have won a grant, financed by Russia and Japan, which is about 12 million rubles ($187,000)," the press service said. "The project’s target is to understand how the Earth’s most ‘sensitive’ ecosystems - the alpine landscape and the Arctic - change under extreme weather conditions, caused by the climate warming."
"Received information will be used to give more accurate forecasts of landslides in mountains, high waters and floods," the press service added.
The big research project will involve specialists in hydrology, glaciers, hydro-chemistry, bio-geo-chemistry, soils, biology, botany, etc. They will conduct complex studies in the Altai Mountains and in the Yamalo-Nenets Region to see how water cycles change, why and how floods and droughts develop. Besides, the key object will be carbon’s cycle - scientists want to analyze its changing concentrations in soils (for example, in emissions from the thawing permafrost) or water.
"The warming climate boosts up the risks of extreme natural calamities, and it is important to understand what happens to the hydro-chemical cycle in the context of the global warming," the press service quoted the project’s participant, director of the Tomsk University’s BioClimLand Center Sergei Kirpotin as saying. "For these studies, we have chosen the northern and mountainous districts - those are most expressive territories, which have both ice and water, and which act as a litmus test in case of any climate transformation."
The research project will continue to late 2020, when the experts will put together a base of extreme hydro-meteorology phenomena, caused by the global warming, including landslides, mudslides and floods. The received information will be used for a new computer-based system to monitor those natural calamities.