CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE HUMAN LIFE CONDITIONS IN THE ARCTIC ZONE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Abstract

The present-day global warming and the rise of climate extremes are the most pronounced in the Arctic zone of theRussian Federation, and this circumstance is very important for the population of these regions. According to the zoning of theterritoryofRussiapresenting the natural conditions of the human’s life, the greater part of the Arctic zone of theRussian Federationis characterized by absolutely unfavorable and very unfavorable conditions. In this connection, estimation of the present-day climate conditions and prediction of future situation is very important for the population in many regions ofRussia, and particularly in the Arctic zone. The Nature conditions of human life in the second half of the 20th century and changes of them in the 21st one were analyzed in this work. This made possible to correct the map “Zoning of the territory of theRussian Federationon natural conditions of the human’s life" and to estimate possible changes of climate conditions by the middle of the 21st century. The results of numerical experiments performed with three models presented at the fifth phase of the coupled models comparison Project (Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project, SMIR5) were used in the work. The models are as follows: one of the Institute of Numerical Mathematics of RAS (INMCM4); the second Meteorological Office of theHadleyCenter(HadGEM2-ES), and the third – Max-Plank Meteorological Institute (MPI-ESM-LR). The most changeable climatic factors (heat, cold, and wind) were investigated. The regions of the Arctic zone of theRussian Federation, where warming is the most evident, have been established, and changes of areas with different levels of climatic discomfort during periods of current and expected climate warming have been estimated. The warming of 1991–2010 in the Western and Eastern parts of the Arctic zone of theRussian Federationresulted in that area with absolutely unfavorable conditions significantly decreased. The scale of the area reduction was found to be comparable to the change of discomfort under the «soft» anthropogenic scenario for the period 2046–2055.