MOSCOW, July 26. /TASS/. Russia’s annual average temperature in the next thirty years may increase by another 1.5 degrees while its character will change with urban infrastructure not being ready for extreme rains and storms, Deputy Director of the Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Semyonov said at a press conference on Tuesday.
"In the future, changes will occur approximately at the same rate as far as we can judge according to climatic models which turned out to be generally correct in recent decades. Which means that in the next 30 years we should expect additional annual average warming by one or one and a half degrees on Russian territory. This is really a lot and noticeable. In the near future, May temperature-wise will approach the end of June," the scientist said.
According to him, the warming will be accompanied by a change in the weather’s character since the atmospheric moisture-holding capacity will increase which will lead to blocking anticyclones and the drying of soil. When an anticyclone changes to a cold front, heavy rains and storms form. This is being observed increasingly more in middle latitudes although previously it was typical of the country’s southern part.
"The climate is becoming more unstable yet if one looks at the statistics of the temperature’s variability, then on Russian territory it is getting lower in all the spans of variability: the synoptic and interdiurnal ones. Temperature jumps objectively become smaller and this is logical because with global warming the temperature contrast in general is getting smaller," the expert added.
"However, it is important to understand that only two hundred years ago only one billion people lived on Earth while now it’s eight times more. They live in greater density, in large cities, and this infrastructure is much more vulnerable than the one that was not only 200-100 but even 50-20 years ago. If you see a diagram of damages caused by hurricanes on the American East Coast you will note an insane increase which is not caused by the increased number of hurricanes which actually, in the long-term perspective, has not increased over the entire century. <…> Our infrastructure became very thin, vulnerable and expensive so extreme events cause increasingly more damage, the researcher concluded.