Report says Russia is heating up too quickly
Print Edition
Russia is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the world, its environment ministry said yesterday, sounding an alarm on the rise in floods and wildfires.
A government report on environmental protection said temperatures in Russia had warmed by 0.42 degrees Celsius per decade since 1976, or 2.5 times higher than the global warming trend of 0.17 degrees.
“Climate change leads to growth of dangerous meteorological phenomena,” the ministry said in a comment to the report published yesterday.
There have been 569 such phenomena in Russia in 2014, “the largest since monitoring began,” the ministry said, including last year’s ravaging floods and this year’s “water deficit” east of Lake Baikal, which led to a “catastrophic rise in fires.”
President Vladimir Putin rarely voices concerns about climate change, having said in the past that a little warming would not hurt the country and seeing it as a boon for Arctic development.
Experts, however, have cautioned that warming could hurt energy infrastructure on permafrost in Siberia and increase other risks.
The report states that while Russia is warming on the whole, some areas in the Far East and southern Siberia are experiencing harsh winters.
Out-of-control fires and deadly floods have hit Russia nearly every year this decade, and the emergency situations ministry in October conceded it has to come up with a new strategy.
“There are new threats in face of climate change,” emergencies minister Vladimir Puchkov said in October, adding that they require “new measures to protect infrastructure.”
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