The South of Russia is recovering after powerful downpours, which led to numerous flooding. The Stavropol Territory suffered the most from the bad weather. According to the regional authorities, the damage from the disaster has already amounted to about 2.5 billion rubles.
Last May in the south of the country was marked by heavy rains. In most of the regions of the North Caucasus, the amount of moisture dropped out exceeded the monthly norm by more than 2 times. In Stavropol, for example, the amount of precipitation was as much as 173 mm, which usually falls in tropical Bangkok! The most inclement weather was the last week. And only at the very end of the month the showers finally diminished. People began to return to previously evacuated areas. As of the end of the week, there were still just over 300 residential buildings under water.
A decrease in water levels is noted in the Kuban basin. For example, in Labinsk, the mark of the water surface at the end of the working week fluctuated around 510 - 530 centimeters. On Qom, where dozens of settlements were threatened with flooding, levels also stabilized. In Georgievsk, the water is at levels of 360-370 cm. This is still quite high, but an intensive decline is already observed at the overlying stations.
According to Roshydromet, the total number of dangerous hydrometeorological phenomena in Russia is steadily growing. If in the early 1990s this figure was about 150-160 cases per year, then after 2010 the average number reaches 350-400. The main share is accounted for by extreme rainfall and strong winds, as well as floods and droughts. This is more than 40% of the total number of events. The direct flood risk is a combination of two factors. On the one hand, these are natural causes, on the other, socio-economic conditions. The high population density along with the amount of precipitation contributes to the risk of this cataclysm.
According to calculations carried out at Moscow State University, most of the territory of the North Caucasus belongs precisely to areas of extremely high flood risk. Along with Altai, some regions of southern Siberia, Krasnoyarsk Territory and Sakhalin. In the south of European Russia, the high risk of floods is due to both intensive development of the territory and natural factors: in particular, the rise in the temperature of the Black Sea surface. Experts believe that at some point it was the temperature rise that crossed a certain threshold line, and convection in the Black Sea region began to develop like the tropics.
Global warming manifests itself in different ways in the southern and northern latitudes: the rise in temperature in the Arctic is much faster than in the tropics. Thus, over time, the temperature difference between these regions of the Earth decreases. As a result, the western transport of air masses becomes weaker, and more and more often the so-called blocking effect is observed in the atmosphere. A stable anticyclone is formed, which does not let moisture into some areas and provides torrential rains in others.
Another important point is how exactly precipitation falls: in the form of relatively short showers, or weak but long rains. Scientists found that the total amount of precipitation did not change so much, but there were less heavy and more heavy rainfalls, this happened in almost all regions of Russia, and statistically significant growth. In addition, precipitation falls extremely unevenly - it may rain for several days in a row, and then there is no rain for a long period.
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According to the research of scientists from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in the future, it is in the Caucasus and the Black Sea region that one should expect an intensification of dangerous convective meteorological phenomena - hurricanes, tornadoes, showers and related floods. But this region will not be the only one. The number of heavy rains in the center of the European territory of Russia and in the Urals will almost double. The redistribution of precipitation is clearly expressed in the south of Siberia. Similar trends, intensified by monsoons, are observed in the south of the Far East.