Air temperature changes until now
According to observations provided by the meteorological network of Roshydromet, the warming in Russia was 1.29°C for the last 100 years (1907–2006), whereas global warming for the same period was 0.74°C according to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. Furthermore, the mean warming in the country was 1.33°C for the period 1976–2006. The annual maxima and minima of daily surface air temperature increased, and the difference between them decreased (minima grew faster than maxima). The number of frosty days decreased.
Data show that during 1990-2000 the mean annual surface air temperature increased by 0.4°C: during the previous hundred years, the increase was only about 1.0°C. Warming is more evident in winter and spring and more intensive east of the Urals (7).
Warming expressed in terms of annual means is mainly due to substantive increases of temperatures in the colder periods. In warm periods, the increase in temperature trend is typical only for the Eastern Siberia and the north-western regions of Russia (except for the White Sea region). Minor cooling or no clear tendency is observed for the remaining territory (11).
In Russia, as a northern country, the warming is growing faster, than for the Earth as a whole. Temperatures in the Arctic are rising at almost double the rate of the global average. In many inland Arctic regions, surface air temperatures have warmed 0.2°C per decade over the past 30 years (7). In some regions of Russia, in particular in Siberia, the acceleration rate of annual-mean temperature is more than 4 times higher than that of the global temperature. 2007 was the warmest year in Russia according to the data of Roshydromet from 1891 until that year. Moreover it was the warmest year overland of the Northern Hemisphere according to the data of CRU from the middle of the 19th century (2). In 2010, Central and Western Russia suffered its worst heat wave since records began, with the July temperature in Moscow beating the previous record by 2.5 °C (12).
Over a large part of the territory of Russia the increase of the vegetation period was noted. It is related to both the earlier beginning of spring and later autumn. At the same time the opposite tendencies are revealed in a number of regions (2).