Russia is experiencing a rise in temperatures at a faster rate than the world as a whole, Russian climate scientists said.
It is well known that global temperatures are increasing due to climate change, with the rate of warming rising as time goes on. Earth's temperature has risen by 0.14 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1880, but since 1981 the rate has been more than twice that.
The nine years from 2013 through 2021 rank among the 10 warmest years on record, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Speaking to the Russian daily newspaper Novye Izvestia on Monday, Igor Shumakov, the head of the Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring (ROSHYDROMET), said the past seven years have been Russia's warmest.
"The probability that at least one year in the next five years will be warmer than the warmest year, 2016 exceeds 90 percent," Shumakov said. "The territory of Russia is warming faster than the planet as a whole. Temperatures in the polar region are rising, sea ice is shrinking, permafrost is degrading, and climate change is about to get worse."
Novye Izvestia also cited Vladimir Kattsov, a climate expert at the Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory Russia, as saying that Russia is warming 2.5 times faster than the rest of the planet.
Kattsov told Newsweek in an email, translated from Russian, that the faster warming in Russia was due to two main factors.
"Land is warming faster than the ocean due to differences in heat capacity," he said.
The Arctic, which contains a significant proportion of Russian territory, is warming especially quickly "due to positive feedbacks operating in the climate system at high latitudes—the so-called 'polar amplification' of global warming," Kattsov added.
Russia stretches over 53 percent of the Arctic Ocean coastline, according to the Arctic Council.
This Arctic amplification is a well-documented phenomenon, causing the area to experience much faster warming than the rest of the planet. Loss of sea ice is one of the most cited reasons as to why this occurs because sea ice tends to reflect rather than absorb heat from the sun.
When sea ice melts, it leaves behind the ocean surface which is darker and absorbs more heat from the sun—and more heat means more melting sea ice.
Julienne Stroeve, a professor of polar observation and modeling at University College London, told Newsweek she was not sure that the observation that Russia is warming faster than the rest of the planet is correct, but that it "very well could be."
"The amplified warming in the Arctic region is largely a result of the loss of sea ice and also earlier removal of spring snow cover," Stroeve said. "Both of these allow for the ocean and the land to warm up."
Stroeve added that Siberia has had record warmth in the past several years, consistent with the aforementioned Arctic amplification.
"I haven't delved specifically into weather patterns for Siberia, but high-pressure ridges are common and if you have a blocking pattern, weather extremes are stuck for longer periods of time," she said.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
