Impact of Warming on Discomfort of Vital Activity of Russia’s Population

Аннотация

Ongoing global warming and growth in climate extremeness affect all areas with particular climate conditions. Therefore, Russian territorial zoning in terms of natural conditions of vital activity of the population is becoming increasingly relevant for evaluating contemporary climate conditions and predicting vital conditions of the population in the future, especially for areas with particular climatic conditions. The zoning is based on the level of impact of the main natural factors on vital activity of the population: cold, heat, moisture, height above sea level, and natural disasters. The study uses maps of “Russian Federation Territory Zoning in Terms of Natural Conditions of Lives of the Population” prepared at the Laboratory of Climatology, Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, for the climatic conditions of the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, as well as the assessment of changes in these conditions in the mid-21st century according to the results of numerical experiments on a global climatic model developed by the Institute of Numerical Mathematics, Russian Academy of Sciences. It has been established that warming from 1991 to 2010 has led to a significant reduction in area with absolutely unfavorable and very unfavorable conditions. The scale of reduction is comparable with changes in discomfort in the “hard” anthropogenic scenario for the period from 2046 to 2055.