Upward Trend in Dangerous Climate Events
In Russia, the forecast and monitoring of dangerous weather or climate events are a part of the state monitoring and reporting system. On an annual basis, the Federal Service of Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring develops and issues a Report on Climate Peculiarities on the Territory of the Russian Federation with a brief analysis of the extreme and dangerous events.
The number of dangerous events (DEs) for the last 9 years is presented in the table below.
The figure below demonstrates the quantity of the dangerous events and complexes of events (including the hydrological and agrometeorological events) that caused significant damage to the economy and the population. The columns marked red shows the quantity of unexpected, unpredicted events. The overall trend line of the significant dangerous events is going strongly upward.
The most frequent dangerous events are heavy rainfalls and floods, forest and peat fires, and strong winds that help spread the fires. Most extreme weather events happen from May to August/ September each year, due to atmospheric peculiarities.
Weather events that have caused the most damage in the last 3 years include: In 2015, the extremely strong wind in the Republic of Khakasiya (up to 31 m/s) in a dry hot season led to extensive damage to grids, trees and some property, as well as fires in 1,371 private houses in which 23 persons died. In 2016, a heavy rain event in Rostov-on-Don led to a flood in the streets, washed out roads and sinkholes up to 5m2 and damage to 2 bridges. This caused severe damage to power grids and resulted in 6 victims hurt and1 death.
In order to ensure the safety of the population and territories against natural and technogenic emergency situations at the local, regional and national levels, the special centralized Unified Emergency Prevention & Response State System (RSChS) was created in Russia in 1992. The main objectives of the RSChS system are forecasting of emergencies; preparing the population to act in emergencies; elimination of emergencies and mitigation of their socio-economic impacts; and reserving financial and material resources for emergency response.