Adaptation in Russia -- impacts are huge

Terra Daily, from an opinion piece in RIA Novosti by Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, director of the Institute of Water Problems, Russian Academy of Sciences: Global climate change defies forecasting. Unprecedented heat, floods, droughts and typhoons brought about by climate change cause tremendous damage. The number of such calamities has doubled over the last 10 years, according to the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry.

Some experts think there is nothing to worry about-periodic alterations in the climate are normal. Some believe the general alarm is the result of a mere lack of knowledge. But then, the danger posed by climate change is no smaller than the danger posed by nuclear war, and we have to face and evaluate it, however vague it might appear.

There is no way to hide from global warming. In fact, the repercussions of climate change might be even worse because the entire climatic system will be thrown out of balance. The average surface temperature is going up, and so are annual deviations from it. Natural calamities go hand in hand with warming. Disastrous floods are getting more frequent in Russia and many other countries. They account for more than half of weather-related dangers.

Floods alternate with droughts in European Russia's south. Heavy rains in spring and early summer cause floods, after which there is not a single raindrop for three months, destroying those crops that survive the floods. The Kuban and Stavropol regions, Russia's breadbasket, permanently face this danger. Economic disasters caused by natural calamities are becoming ever more frequent. The World Bank estimates Russia's weather damages, largely caused by climate change, at an annual 30-60 billion rubles, roughly $1-$2 billion.

Floods, usually caused by typhoons, are also frequent in the Russian Far East-the Primorye and Khabarovsk territories, Kamchatka, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Winter floods are typical of the Arctic Ocean basin. The spring inundation of the Lena, the largest Eurasian river, washed away the town and port of Lensk in 2001. The town was rebuilt on a new site. The evacuation and ensuing housing and infrastructural reconstruction cost an exorbitant sum.

Average warming in Russia due to anthropogenic factors is about one degree. In Siberia, it is four to six degrees-enough to shrink the permafrost area. Pernicious effects are visible even now, with the borders of the taiga, forest tundra and tundra itself receding northward-suffice it to compare space photographs from 30 years ago with the latest ones. The change endangers oil pipelines and the entire infrastructure of Siberia's west and northwest. Permafrost thawing has not yet achieved a scale that poses a threat of infrastructural accidents-but we can never be too careful.…