News | Climate Change

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/01/01/38501852.html

2010 may go down in history as a year that set an absolute number of records in terms of natural cataclysms. The eruption of the Eyjafjallaökull volcano in Iceland actually paralyzed air traffic in Europe; there were hurricanes in America, snowstorms in Europe, earthquakes and volcano eruptions in Indonesia and Haiti, inundations in Pakistan, and drought in Russia.

Last summer’s heat wave in Russia was caused the aftermath of global climate change. Experts point out that periods of long hot weather have grown more frequent in Russia recently. According to observations, droughts are becoming one of the most unfavourable consequences of climate change in the 21st century Russia. It is just as dangerous that each subsequent drought is hotter and longer than the previous one.
Besides damaging agriculture, a heat wave threatens people’s health and life. This is what Professor, Doctor of Geography with the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geography Alexander Zlatokrylin says about the basic drought-caused problems in an interview with the Voice of Russia.
"People are unable to get adapted to these kinds of anomalous phenomena," Alexander Zlatokrylin says. "Drought killed harvest in large areas, both the harvest of winter- and spring-planted crops. Fires proved a horrible hazard, although, of course, some of them were not wildfires, but the ones caused by human activities."
Experts fear that climate change will continue to contribute to temperature fluctuations in years to come, which means that very hot summer and subsequent severe winter will be not uncommon in many countries, including Russia. In a recent interview with the Voice of Russia, Vladimir Grachev, from UNESCO’s Ecology Committee, urged Russians to brace for tougher times ahead in terms of weather.
Coping with extreme weather conditions remains one of the main headaches of each and every person, Grachev says, citing hurricanes and storms, among other things. In this regard, the ongoing global warming certainly add to the problem, he concludes.
Right now, Russia is intensifying efforts aimed to minimize the fallout of natural disasters, not least forest fires, floods and drought.