(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Richard Winterbottom, special to RBTH – November 3, 2014) Keeping a weather eye open: With winter slowly creeping in, our newly repatriated expat recalls how Russians react to the weather. Last week my Facebook and Vkontakte walls have been plastered with pictures of perviy sneg (first snow of the year) in several of […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 30, 2014) The early onset of winter experienced this year by residents in Siberia and the Ural Mountains could mark the start of a 35-year cycle of colder weather, a leading Russian scientist said Wednesday. “Changes in climate are cyclical. From 1946 to 1976, there was a cold cycle, which was then replaced by […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 17, 2014) After several years of relatively mild winters, Russia is gearing up for what meteorologists say will be a truly “Russian winter,” with its traditional frosts and ample snowfall. “Our estimations show that this year’s winter will be closer to our long-term average,” Alexander Frolov, head of the Federal Agency for Hydrometeorology and […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Gleb Fedorov, RBTH – April 9, 2014) The series of unusual climatic events that has affected Russia over the past few years has continued into the beginning of 2014. With dramatic global changes predicted as a result of rising temperatures, what awaits the country’s geography and economy? The series of unusual climatic events […]
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(Interfax – April 1, 2014) Contrary to widespread belief, global warming is continuing, with Russia hit the hardest, the UN Panel on Climate Change said in a report. The 1,500-page report, prepared by more than 250 experts, was published on Monday and will be submitted to governments, which members of the Russian group of experts said at a press conference […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 2, 2014) A snowstorm buffeted Moscow for about 18 hours, snarling traffic and blanketing the city in a record 17 centimeters of white that many residents probably wished was an April Fool’s joke. “Winter has returned to Moscow, and this is no April Fool’s joke,” Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said at a City Hall meeting. […]
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MOSCOW. Feb 4 (Interfax) – No shortages of snow are likely in Sochi, said Roman Vilfand, chief of the weather monitoring service, Hydrometcentre. “The snow is thick and firm enough. No problems are likely to arise with the snow, at least through the first 20 days of February,” Vilfand said. Vilfand’s deputy in charge of hydrometeorological support for the Games, […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – SOCHI – January 28, 2014) It has been raining in Sochi for two weeks. The rain isn’t expected to disrupt the Winter Olympics, which open Feb. 7 on the snow-covered mountains looming over this subtropical Black Sea resort. But the rain is the subject of urban legend. Both good and bad weather […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Delphine d’Amora – January 17, 2014) As a major exporter of fossil fuels, Russia may seem an unlikely candidate for global environmental champion, but macro-economic experts believe the country can play a vital role in reducing carbon emissions and the impact of climate change. This uncommon view of the country’s potential to support ecological improvement […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – January 8, 2014) Moscow’s unseasonably warm weather is expected to continue over the next few days, creating the potential for setting temperature records that are a far cry from those being caused by the polar vortex in the United States and Canada. Fobos weather center said that temperatures in Moscow were expected to reach three […]
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MOSCOW, January 7 (RIA Novosti) A Russian ship stranded in the East Antarctic since Christmas managed to break free due to favorable weather conditions, the vessel’s owner said Tuesday. The Akademik Shokalsky has left the ice trap and is currently speeding north at 7 knots, said Yury Volkov, the director of the Far Eastern Regional Hydrometeorological Research Institute. The […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Andy Frecka – December 16, 2013) From Murmansk to Magadan, Sochi to Salekhard, and from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka, its tentacles weave a web of hideous destruction. Quietly, on the steppes of Siberia, now whispering over the Urals, then across the Volga. Now coming down your street as you innocently sit in your home. No, I […]
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(Interfax – November 26, 2013) Global warming has delayed snow accumulation in the Moscow region for eight or nine days on average as compared with the second half of the 20th century, Hydro-Meteorological Center Director Roman Vilfand said. “Climate change has shifted steady snow accumulation in the Moscow region by approximately eight or nine days over the past 20 years,” […]
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MOSCOW, November 18 (RIA Novosti) Russia ranked 53rd out of 58 countries in a new ranking of efforts to prevent climate change. Russia lost two slots from last year in the Climate Change Performance Index, presented Monday at a climate conference in Warsaw by the Bohn-based NGO Germanwatch. The first three slots in this year’s rating were left unoccupied […]
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MOSCOW, November 6 (RIA Novosti) Russian weather experts have said that Tuesday night was the hottest ever recorded in Moscow during the fall season. Mayak radio station cited the Moscow Weather Bureau as saying that overnight temperatures in the city stood at around 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit). Temperatures in Moscow typically hover around freezing point by November, […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Andrei Kislyakov, special to RBTH – October 28, 2013) The debate about the permanence of climate change goes on, but the effects of warmer temperatures can already be felt. In an article published in the journal “Nature” in mid-October, British scientists said they had defined a certain “point of non-return” for climate change […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – October 10, 2013) It’s cold, it’s gray, and – given that it’s only October – it’s going to get worse. The weather this time of year is not just unpleasant – it can affect everything from the economy to how Russians feel about their lives, experts say. After record-breaking rainfall in September […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – September 25, 2013) Moscow residents may not have gotten the typical “Indian summer” this September, but they were able to get an idea of what life is like in a rainforest, just not the tropical variety. As of Tuesday, about 174 millimeters of rain had fallen on Moscow, which is equivalent to the monthly average […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, August 7, 2013) Two-thirds of the territory of the Russian Federation is covered by permafrost, and the melting of this ice is rapidly “converting a large part of Russia into a swamp,” according to studies by British and Russian scholars reported and discussed this week in Moscow’s “Novyye izvestiya.” Researchers at the […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, June 27, 2013) Temperatures soared to 31.4 degrees Centigrade in Moscow on Thursday afternoon, the hydro-meteorological bureau of Moscow and the Moscow region told Interfax. “A century-old record has been repeated: Moscow had temperatures of 31.4 degrees Centigrade on June 27, 1911,” it said. The bureau does not rule out the temperature record might be beaten by […]
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(Interfax – MOSCOW, May 27, 2013) The personnel of the SP-40 weather station, based on a split ice floe in the Arctic Ocean will be evacuated in mid-June, Natural Resources Minister Sergei Donskoi told reporters on Monday. An icebreaker will depart from Murmansk to collect the personnel and equipment. “If the mission goes as planned and the Yamal icebreaker keeps […]
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(RIA Novosti – MOSCOW, May 15, 2013) The spring weather in Moscow broke the temperature record for the second day running on Wednesday, hitting 28.8 degrees Celsius (83.8 degrees Fahrenheit), Meteonovosti weather website reported on Wednesday. “For the second day in a row, Moscow has set a record high. The previous maximum temperature for May 15, registered in 1946, […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 17, 2013) The federal weather bureau announced on Wednesday that all the snow in the capital had finally melted, giving Muscovites the go-ahead to cheer the arrival of spring. On Wednesday morning, the snow cover at the weather station at the All-Russia Exhibition Center in Moscow had fallen to zero centimeters from Tuesday’s measurement […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 12, 2013) It’s official: This past winter will down in history as one of the snowiest ever. An astounding 3 meters, 29 centimeters of snow fell on Moscow, more than double the average of 1.5 meters, Deputy Mayor Pyotr Biryukov said Friday. The snowfall hit another record on Feb. 12, when 30 centimeters of […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – RIA Novosti – April 1, 2013) World Wildlife Fund expert Alexei Kokorin comments on the latest Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations forecasts. Why is the climate in Russia and the U.S. changing twice as fast as anywhere else? By how many degrees will the temperature in the Arctic rise by 2050, and what […]
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MOSCOW. April 1 (Interfax) – Yury Neyelov, a member of the Arctic Council, former governor of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, and a senator, believes white bears may become extinct in 30-50 years. “The situation with the population of white bears currently causes serious concerns without exaggeration. According to the World Wildlife Fund, white bears may stop reproducing in 2-3 years, […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Allison Quinn and Andrew McChesney – April 2, 2013) April Fools’ Day proved to be no laughing matter in Moscow on Monday, with the city receiving up to 40 percent of the month’s norm of snow in one day. The city was blanketed with up to 18 millimeters of snow through Monday, or “up to […]
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MOSCOW, March 20 (RIA Novosti) Temperatures in the Arctic will warm up twice as fast as in the rest of the world this century, Russian Emergency Situations Ministry has warned. “In the 21st century, the temperature in the Arctic the average [speed] of global warming will rise 2-2.5 times faster,” the ministry’s center responsible for monitoring meteorological trends, […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Roland Oliphant – February 6, 2013) The heaviest snowfall in a century brought Moscow and the surrounding region to a near standstill and left hundreds of people without power, officials said Tuesday. And with snowfall set to continue at least until the end of the week, the authorities are bracing for more chaos on the […]
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MOSCOW, February 5 (RIA Novosti) Moscow has not witnessed such a snowy winter in the past 100 years, Deputy Mayor Pyotr Biryukov said on Tuesday, after heavy snowfall hit the Russian capital last night. “This is the snowiest winter in 100 years,” Biryukov said, adding that 216 centimeters (85 inches) of snow have blanketed Moscow since the beginning of […]
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(www.opendemocracy.net – Mikhail Loginov – January 16, 2013) Mikhail Loginov is a journalist and novelist based in St. Petersburg. He is the author of the recently published bestselling political thriller “Battle for Kremlin”. Most radiators in urban Russian homes are fed by hot water transported from heating plants miles away. Ageing pipes frequently burst, causing hardship and even fatalities. Could […]
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(Voice of America – James Brooke – Dec. 3, 2012 – James Brooke is VOA Moscow bureau chief, covering Russia and the former USSR) It snowed in Russia last week. (Yawn. What else is new?) But Russia no longer is Dr. Zhivago country, a rural place where troika sleighs slide smoothly across white, wintry landscapes. Modern Russians have a deep, […]
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DOHA, December 6 (RIA Novosti) Russia reaffirmed on Thursday its decision to withdraw from the second period of commitment to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, but said it would stick to its goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent in the next decade. “In 2013, our country will begin implementation of its commitments to reduce greenhouse […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Alina Lobzina – Dec. 5, 2012) Muscovites are to brace for the coldest winter in 20 years, a weather forecast service warned on Wednesday. “It will be like in the good old times snowy and frosty, with no deviations,” a representative of the Fobos weather center told RIA Novosti. Winter seasons when Muscovites wade […]
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(Snow traps drivers for days in giant Russia traffic jam – Reuters – Dec. 2, 2012 – http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/03/uk-russia-traffic-idUSLNE8B201620121203) Reuters reports on a two-days-and-counting, 120-mile-long traffic jam on a major Russian highway resulting from heavy snow and involving thousands of vehicles: Thousands of trucks and cars have been stuck on a major highway, some for more than two days, in a […]
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(Voice of America – James Brooke – Nov. 28, 2012) MOSCOW Americans may have seen the downside of climate change when Hurricane Sandy bashed into New Jersey and New York City in October. Some scientists say melting Arctic ice helped to create the largest Atlantic hurricane on record. Russians and Chinese, however, see an upside to ice melting in […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Alex Morales – November 27, 2012) Thawing permafrost threatens to intensify global warming, sending the planet beyond the 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of increases that envoys at United Nations climate talks have set as a maximum. Frozen soils that cover a quarter of the land area in the northern hemisphere contain 1,700 gigatons […]
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[Scientists say new signs of global warming in Russian Arctic – AFP – November 22, 2012 – click here for full article] AFP covers warming in the Russian Arctic: The Russian Arctic is losing ice cover and being inhabited by species from the south in the latest sign of climate change, according to a group of Russian scientists. * * […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Ben Aris in Moscow – October 31, 2012) Exactly 200 years ago this month, Napoleon rode out of Moscow with what was left of the Grande Armée, having failed to crush the Russian army, only to be famously defeated himself by the Russian winter. Given the love of round number anniversaries by the press […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – October 22, 2012) With weather forecasters promising a rapid dip in Moscow’s temperature, traffic police urged drivers Monday not to delay installing winter tires on their cars ahead of an expected first frost. “With the arrival of fall, weather conditions have definitely become worse, which demands drivers be extra careful on the roads,” traffic police […]
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