This spring is so rich in surprises that the Russians have already written it down as abnormal. What to expect from the weather in the coming months and from the climate in the coming years, said the famous scientist-climatologist Vladimir Klimenko, head of the laboratory of global energy problems at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Folk omens are a little better than horoscopes
Professor, with what feeling did you leave the house in the April blizzard?
- With a feeling of deep satisfaction.
Why?
- Because my forecast for this period came true. I am willing to make forecasts - not only out of love for the topic, but also because I am interested in checking how the scientific approaches that we use to assess global climate processes work. Every year we forecast four upcoming seasons and, dare I say, we are doing well. Since a very rapid warming began in March, the weather has run quite far from my forecast, but now it has come true.
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Is it possible to predict the weather for the season?
- I do not predict the weather, but the climatic characteristics. As for the weather specifically, more than a week is no longer a forecast, but a scenario. The climate system has such an independent disposition that it is difficult to formalize. Experts strongly doubt that it will ever be possible to give a decent forecast for more than 8-10 days.
Every year the people talk about some kind of anomaly. But snow in April is quite common. So why is everyone surprised?
- Years of experience talking about the weather with different people convinces me that they do not remember anything. The maximum is last year. And some other phenomena of a secular scale such as the heat of 2010. On April 1, I thought I was being pranked because there was a flurry of calls from radio stations asking for comment on the snowfall that day.
I had to explain that this is not unusual. The current weather has nothing to do with what happened on the same days 1-2-5 years ago. That is why folk signs and forecasts, which are so abused in our country, are meaningless. It's a little better than horoscopes.
But some still work?
- There is some surprising recurrence in the weather. For example, bird cherry cold in early May. But in recent years they practically do not exist, May has become so warmer that they are simply lost. As far as I remember, the last time real bird cherry chills were in May 1999 - I myself then wore an autumn jacket until the twenties.
Volcanoes will definitely explode
In Russia, it is customary to scold the climate, as if it is something permanent, so to speak, written in a kind. So it is changing?
- Sure. The climate is a highly dynamic phenomenon. We were told at school that the remains of mammoths were found in the Moscow region.
Mammoths are a very long time ago
- Not, no so much. This is only 10-12 thousand years ago, practically yesterday. If we operate with intervals equal to the history of human civilization, we get the following: we live in a unique period when the climate is changing unusually quickly.
Is this a "merit" of the person?
- Mostly yes. I have heard many times how scientists, when asked about the causes of global warming, said: "Whoever answers this question will receive a Nobel Prize." So here's your answer: the proportion of the anthropogenic factor, that is, the human contribution to modern warming, is more than 70 percent. It grows every year mainly due to the use of fossil fuels - coal, oil and gas.
And what adds the other 30 percent?
- First, the Sun. Greenhouse warming is essentially transformed solar energy that carbon dioxide does not release back into space. Plus, during almost the entire 20th century, the Sun was in an extremely active phase, unprecedented in the last 500 years. Secondly, volcanoes. One powerful volcanic eruption could plunge the Earth into an ice age.
Are there such volcanoes on the planet now?
- Two. One is in Yellowstone National Park. Scientists are not scientists to the point of knowing when it might erupt. Therefore, they say this: it will definitely explode - in the next 5 thousand years. Have you ever heard of German volcanoes? So, another very dangerous dormant volcano is located on the left bank of the Rhine. The Germans are watching him carefully and, surprisingly, have a plan of action in case of a super-eruption. In addition to the sun and volcanoes, the Atlantic Ocean plays a prominent role in global warming. The ocean lives its own special life, it has breath, 70-year-old inhalation and exhalation.
On exhalation, the Atlantic begins to more intensively send westward winds towards Europe. There are many such winds - warm winters, early springs, an increase in the average annual temperature. Around 2000, there was a peak in the warm phase, when temperatures rose at an incredible rate.
Then 95 percent of scientists said that - everything, the end. The rate of global warming was such that in a hundred years it would be 2.5 degrees - this is half the distance between the ice age and the present time! If this continued further, it would be a global disaster. But the warming has suddenly slowed down.
And what will happen next?
- It will continue, but at a slower rate. However, my forecast is at odds with the one given by the world scientific community. They are still going to have disaster, although I'm sure they are wrong.
The climate saves us fuel
Is global warming generally bad for humans?
- As a layman, I am deeply satisfied that the climate of my city has become more comfortable - winters are warmer, summer begins earlier and ends later. When I first went to work abroad and spent the winter in Oxford, I realized that I like it better. Moscow now has the climate of Warsaw at the end of the 19th century, and in the future there will be a modern climate of Vienna. What's wrong with that? By the way, the climate is changing everywhere, but not everywhere as favorable as in Russia.
Our climate is so interesting that it changes much more than the climate of Spain, for example, or the United States. Why? Quite simply, because this is how we are located on the planet. For a little over 100 years, the global climate has warmed by 0.8 degrees on average. Moscow, even if we subtract the result of crowding, has warmed by almost 2 degrees during the same time. Yakutia - by 3 degrees.
I suspect that climate change pleases you as well as energy?
- Not that word! Russia spends about 1 billion tons of fuel on itself annually. Of this, 400 million tons are spent on heating. Warm winters mean 50-100 million tons of savings. And it literally falls on us from the sky. In general, I think that the economy in Russia would be much worse if we had preserved the climate of the 60s-70s of the last century, which, by the way, were moderately cold.
Will the warming end ever?
- Yes. After about 50 thousand years. Even if tomorrow we turn off all energy sources - we will not burn oil, gas, or coal - the warm climate will remain for many thousands of years. And we, for obvious reasons, will not turn them off.
Summer will be cooler than many people want
The blizzards, fortunately, are over, and the weather is again quite spring. How long?
- When I made my forecast, it turned out that the spring would be very warm. And so it happened. If it had ended on April 8, it would have turned out to be the warmest in all 240 years of instrumental observations of the climate in our city. April will be close to normal, and May is not expected to be abnormally warm either. By the way, there will be no more cold springs in Russia at all, as well as cold winters.
What will summer be like?
- Again they began to talk about a repetition of the heat of 2010, but this will not happen. A similar summer will happen in the 40s of our century, not earlier. And the current one will be slightly warmer than the previous one.
That is normal?
- It depends on whom. I noticed that Muscovites, for example, prefer hot summers. This is about 3 degrees or more above the climatic norm. For comparison: in 2010 the summer was 5 degrees warmer. This year, according to my forecast, it will be 1.3 degrees above normal. For the layman, this is rather cool, because the average summer temperature in Moscow is only 17 degrees.
But at least without anomalies?
- Nobody will tell you that. Unfortunately, no disasters are predicted.