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Russia most affected by global warming

Arkhangelsk in Northern Russia is one of the towns that will be most affected by rising sea levels.

Global warming will have more impact on Russia than any other area of the world, says Head of Russia’s Agency on Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring Aleksander Frolov.

Location

“Global warming will have a stronger impact on Russia than on the rest of the northern hemisphere and the world”, he said to Interfax according to Vesti.

“The intensity of the warming will be about twice as high here”, Frolov said.

During the last 40 years, the average temperature in Russian has increased 0.4 degrees every ten years. The global warming can been seen through higher air temperatures, reduction in ice cover and snow cover, higher sea levels, Frolov said and reminded that the Arctic ice cover last year reached a record low.

In October this year Norwegian and Russian scientists said that the surface water of the Barents Sea was 5 degrees C warmer than normal. They linked the peak-temperatures with the unusual warm summer in the northernmost parts of mainland Norway and on Russia’s Kola Peninsula. 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in a report from September 2013 said it was “extremely likely” that warming since the 1950s has been man-made, adopting its strongest language yet on the state of the world’s climate system. In its previous assessment in 2007 the U.N. panel said it was “very likely” that humans caused global warming.

“The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amount of snow and ice has diminished, the global mean sea level has risen and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased,” Qin Dahe, the co-chair of the IPCC working group that compiled the report, said in a statement.

The IPCC report projected a sea level rise by 2100 of 26-82 centimeters, up from the 18-59 centimeter rise it predicted six years ago. The report also projected that average temperatures will rise 0.3 to 4.8 degrees C by the end of the century.