Climate chaos

Even the Russian media seems to have come round to talking about climate chaos and climate change.

Weather forecast: more surprises coming

Recently, the weather has been one huge anomaly – while the European part of Russia enjoyed a thaw in early January, the US was freezing. Experts say, anomalies like that will soon become a routine due to the global climate change

Voice of Russia,

20 January, 2014

Our planet seems to be in fever rushing from extreme cold to hot. Thus, the beginning of January set a number of climate records. First Canada resisted freezing rain, then North America combatted the hell frost, the worst in 100 years. 

Even Hawaii saw below-zero temperatures, while some states fell below 50C and the Niagara Falls froze.

Meanwhile, Russians celebrated the New Year under a pouring rain – the temperature was 10 degrees above the norm. Tree buds were opening and

and snowdrops blossomed in the woods.

Meteorologists researched interrelation between abnormally warm winter in Europe and Arctic cold in the USA. The warm Gulf Stream current was blocked by cold waters of the Arctic Ocean, said the head of the Geoecology and Sustainability Laboratory of Russia’s MGIMO Institute of Foreign Relations, Natalya Ryazanova.

"The east of America is gripped by a cold snap as cold water from the Arctic drains somewhere between the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and Greenland. Quite a big span of cold stretches to the 40th parallel north – the latitude of New York and forms an extensive front where warm and cold air masses collide".

These are not the first weather anomalies in the world history, researchers say. Russian meteorologists Borisenkov and Pasetsky collected a bunch of them in their book Thousand-year chronicle of the extraordinary natural phenomena.

Thus, the winter of 1011 was described as the most rigorous ever -

: then Bosporus froze and Egypt’s Nile was ice-covered. 1083 was the great draught on East European Plain, 1471 – the abnormally early spring in Western Europe when in February trees blossomed, as if it were May.

Climatologists, however, register significantly more abnormal weather phenomena compared to the past. The climate change is especially visible in northern latitudes, says senior research fellow of the Institute of Environmental and Evolution Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, participant of numerous Arctic expeditions Ilya Mordvintsev

"All scientists register climate anomalies in the Arctic and we’re monitoring the trend. Judging by the pace of ice cover shrinkage, it’s definitely a thaw. It’s the trend of the last five years. The question is – what causes this warning? CO2 emissions or just common nature cycles which occurred earlier, but were not recorded as we had no outer space surveillance systems for more accurate observations".

Climatologists warn that climate changes lead to the seasons creep: winter and summer become longer, but mid-seasons vanish. Last year Russians actually had no spring – it was cold till mid April and May brought summer heat. So if the climate will continue to change, we will no longer be surprised by the weather.

Svetlana Kalmykova