Extreme Heat Wave over European Russia in Summer 2010: Anomaly or a Manifestation of Climatic Trend?

Extraordinary temperature anomalies over European Russia (ER) in summer 2010 raised a legitimate question in the title of this presentation. A 60-days-long hot anticyclonic weather system with daily temperature anomalies as high as +10K and no or negligible amount of rainfall first decimated crops in the forest-steppe zone of ER, gradually dried wetlands in the forest zone and, finally, caused numerous natural and anthropogenic fires that at the time of this abstract preparation have not yet been extinguished. The extreme heat, lack of precipitation, and forest fires have caused hundreds of deaths and multimillion dollars in property losses. Indirect losses of lives due to this weather anomaly, with the ensuing fires and related air pollution, as well as the absence of air conditioning in apartments has yet to be estimated. The center of European Russia was well covered by meteorological observations for the past 130 years. These data, historical weather records (yearbooks or "letopisi" , which were carried on in the major Russian monasteries), and finally, dendroclimatological information, all show that this summer temperature anomaly was well above all known extremes in the past 1000 years. Like ocean waves and ocean tides, weather and climate variability go together strengthening (or mitigating) each other. We shall show the precursors of the current outbreak using principally the most accurate meteorological records of the past century updated to 2009 (at the Session, the 2010 data will also be presented). While a careful analyses of these records and thoughtful analyses of recent similar temperature outbreaks in Western Europe could not prevent the occurrence of this disaster, the lessons learned from these analyses (a) would warn about its increasing probability and (b) mitigation and adaptation measures could well be made to reduce its negative consequences. Among our arguments are: (1)There is a century-long tendency of reduction of equator minus pole temperature differences which is the meridional temperature gradient that controls westerly flow over the extratopics; (2)There is a well documented global temperature rise which is directly related to the increase in frequency of large blocking waves over Europe (so-called Meridional and Eastern macro-circulation types according to the Wangengeim-Girs classification); (3)There is an earlier onset and a shorter period of snowmelt documented over East Europe for the past several decades; (4) There is a paleoclimatic evidence that summer conditions were drier than now during the warmer period of the past; and (5) During the past 130 years prior to 2010 there was a significant increase in the frequency of "hot nights" with Tmin ≥75°F (≥23.9°C) over ER. These "hot nights" are known to directly correlate with health problems (including premature death rates) in the mid-latitude countries (e.g., the U.S.). Of course, nobody could predict the size and timing for an extraordinary weather anomaly in summer 2010 using climate change considerations. But, the ongoing climatic changes staged the scene for it over ER and increased its probability.