The Amur and Zeya rivers in the Blagoveshchensk region do not want to obey the calendar schedule. The end of November - the beginning of December is the time when stable ice has already formed on the reservoirs. But Zeya was not frozen at all, Cupid was frozen, but not quite. What a few years ago would have been called an anomaly is now quite common
The usual, but not for fishermen - they now have to look for rare ice islands in order to settle down with a fishing rod. “This is not normal at all! - the amateur fisherman Gennady Ulissky is surprised. - It used to freeze by mid-November, but now there is no ice. This is all probably due to global warming. Pavel Matyukhin is also guilty of global warming. In winter, he comes to Zeya twice a week to swim in cold water. She says she still remembers the times when the frost was down to -40 degrees. “The fact that the river does not freeze, I would associate with warming. It really happens, including on the Amur land - Zeya, Bureya and Amur do not freeze,”says Pavel.
Cupid really doesn't freeze. More precisely, the ice on the river has almost risen, with the exception of a large ice hole.
Perhaps, global warming really affected the Amur rivers, but warming is not the main reason, ecologists say. They say that the temperature on Earth changes every 100 years. Now we live in the warmest time of the century. “Now the first decade of December is already underway, and the temperatures are relatively low: -2 … -7 degrees. This is quite a bit for December in the Amur Region. Plus, the Zeya has a slightly stronger current, so the ice that forms under such conditions simply breaks, explains Petr Osipov, director of the Amur SoES public environmental organization.
Human intervention in natural processes also negatively affects the climate. “Now there is a natural process of freezing. In 2007, freeze-up was established on Zeya on December 4, - notes Dmitry Popov, head of the hydrology department of the Amur hydrometeorological center - the waters of the Zeya are regulated by the operation of the hydroelectric power station, so the water is much warmer than on the Amur. There is nothing wrong with that."
Most Amur residents have a positive attitude to climate warming - now, they say, they are not so cold in winter either. True, they will have to rejoice only for about 30 years - just after that much time, according to the forecasts of ecologists, the century of climatic cooling will begin.