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The article is devoted to a little-known episode in the history of the development of the Russian North, one that is associated with the name of the Vologda merchant Alexander Ivanovich Dengin. The contribution brings together the available biographical information about A.I. Dengin and characterizes his project concerning the economic development of the territory adjacent to the mouth of the Pechora River. This project he elaborated in the 1820s to 1840s; it aimed at the development of both the Pechora Region and Western Siberia by establishing regular water communication between the European and Asian parts of Russia. The article reviews the various stages in the drafting of this document, and traces its way through different instances. Filled with patriotic rhetoric, the source under consideration emphasizes not only Dengins personal interest - to derive material benefits from the exploitation of the Pechora estuary - but also reflects that entrepreneurs were fully aware of the necessity to develop the northern territories in order to integrate these regions fully into the Russian Empire. A close cooperation between state authorities and representatives of private capital was considered an indispensable condition for achieving this goal. A.I. Dengins note also reveals how the Russian merchant class of the pre-Reform period viewed the world. They had a very high opinion of their professional activities, which they thought were indispensable not only for the successful functioning of the economy but also for raising the general level of culture and education among the population. Commerce was seen as the most important means for achieving progress and common welfare.

Background. Yellow wagtails are one of the key groups of ground–nesting Passeriformes birds of steppe communities. Data on the distribution and settlement density of yellow wagtails allow us to use the group as an indicator of the state of steppe communities. Material and methods. During the 2016-2022 field seasons, comprehensive studies of nesting biotopes of yellow wagtails were conducted in the steppe regions of Northern Eurasia: the Middle Volga Region, the Southern Urals, and the south of Western Siberia. The chemical composition of the soil and plant associations at sites in nesting biotopes of yellow wagtail colonies were analyzed. Results. Yellow wagtails prefer nesting biotopes in steppe conditions in the floodplains of salt lakes and steppe rivers characterized by the following chemical and mechanical features of the soil: pH from slightly acidic to neutral (Lim 4.7–7.8); organic matter content from moderate to high (Lim 3.0–14.3); phosphorus content from low to very high (Lim 20-460.0); potassium content from moderate to very high (Lim 65-1540); calcium content from moderate to very high (Lim 5.6–43.8); magnesium content from low to very high (Lim 1.5–17.1); the sulfur content is from low to high (Lim 2-15.0); copper content from moderate to high (Lim 2.6–8.8); zinc content from low to moderate (Lim 0.33–11.5); manganese content from moderate to high (Lim 5.2–86.5); mechanical composition of the soil – from sandy loam to medium clay (Lim 10.7–75). Conclusion. Yellow wagtails in steppe conditions prefer biotopes for nesting in the floodplains of salt lakes and steppe rivers, with pH-neutral soil, high in phosphorus and potassium, calcium, magnesium, copper and manganese and rather loose (from sandy loam and light loam to medium clay) , malleable for the device nesting fossa. Yellow wagtails are indicators of the conservation of steppe landscapes, salt lake floodplains, and soil features in halophytic steppe and meadow biotopes.

Unprecedented heat waves have been demonstrated sweeping across much of the Northern Hemisphere in recent summers. However, this study reveals that for northern Eurasia (30°–70°N, 10°–130°E), significant increases in summer extreme high temperature days (EHTDs) have already commenced since the mid-1990s, with the peaks centered on the surrounding areas of the Caspian Sea and Lake Baikal. Results indicate that compared with the period of 1960–1994 (P1), during 1995–2018 (P2) high-pressure and anticyclonic anomalies occupy the areas around the Caspian Sea and Lake Baikal, thus suppressing local cloud cover and precipitation, enhancing the solar radiation and high-temperature anomalies. The anticyclonic anomaly over Lake Baikal shows a close relationship with the increasing trend of global temperature, and the anomalous anticyclone over the Caspian Sea is under the influence of the warm North Atlantic and anomalous upper-troposphere jet stream during P2. The warmer than normal North Atlantic leads to the high-pressure anomaly over the Caspian Sea by modulating the Rossby wave activity. In addition, during P2, the temperatures in the middle North Atlantic and Western Europe show greater increments than those over higher latitudes, and thus the temperature gradient enhances the westerly thermal wind, which therefore leads to an anomalous upper-level jet stream to the North of the Caspian Sea. Under this circumstance, the Caspian Sea is located to the right side of the anomalous jet exit, inducing the suppressed upward motion over there and favoring the occurrence of more EHTDs after the mid-1990s.

Numerous depictions of elk-shaped ships are discovered in rock art of the Northern Europe and Siberia, dating from the Mesolithic time to the Bronze age. Usually they are interpreted as Boats of the Deads, connecting the Worlds. The water is the symbol of a border between Worlds in traditional societies. Northern Europe archaeological findings prove that images of the Cervid as a mediator between Worlds and the Boat of the Deads became connected in the Stone Age. Red deer (Cervus Elaphus) remnants were found in burials from the Mesolithic period to the Iron Age. Cemeteries of humans in boats with deer antlers or elk-headed stuffs were discovered at the Mesolithic sites of Denmark (Vedbaeck, Mollegabet) and in Northern Russia (Bolshoy Oleniy Ostrov). Being of a great significance in the mytho-ritual complex of the Stone Age population in Europe, Elk-Boat as the transport between Worlds is preserved in folklore of South-East European people. Mythological motif of the Cervid, sailing on the Sea or the River, with the sleeping maiden on his antlers, is widespread in South and Eastern Europe.

Dead wood, including coarse woody debris, CWD, and fine woody debris, FWD, plays a substantial role in forest ecosystem functioning. However, the amount and dynamics of dead wood in the forests of Northern Eurasia are poorly understood. The aim of this study was to develop a spatially distributed modelling system (limited to the territories of the former Soviet Union) to assess the amount and structure of dead wood by its components (including snags, logs, stumps, and the dry branches of living trees) based on the most comprehensive database of field measurements to date. The system is intended to be used to assess the dead wood volume and the amount of dead wood in carbon units as part of the carbon budget calculation of forests at different scales. It is presented using multi-dimensional regression equations of dead wood expansion factors (DWEF)—the ratio of the dead wood component volume to the growing stock volume of the stands. The system can be also used for the accounting of dead wood stock and its dynamics in national greenhouse gas inventories and UNFCCC reporting. The system’s accuracy is satisfactory for the average level of disturbance regimes but it may require corrections for regions with accelerated disturbance regimes.

Wildfires play a critical role in re-shaping boreal ecosystems and climate. It was projected that, owing to the Arctic amplification, boreal wildfires would become more frequent and severe in the coming decades. Although provoking concern, the spatiotemporal changes in boreal wildfires remain unclear, and there are substantial inconsistencies among previous findings. In this study, we performed a comprehensive analysis to determine the spatiotemporal changes in wildfires over Northern Eurasia (NEA) from 2003 to 2020 using a reconstructed Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) active fire product. We found that wildfires in NEA exhibited contrasting changes in different latitudinal zones, land cover types, and seasons from 2003 to 2020. Cropland wildfires, mainly distributed at low latitudes (50–60°N), considerably decreased by 81% during the study period. Whereas forest wildfires ignited at high latitudes (north of 60°N) have nearly tripled (increasing at rate of 11~13% per year) during the past two decades. The southwestern and northeastern NEA regions exhibited contrasting patterns of wildfire changes. The active fire counts in the southwestern NEA decreased by 90% at a rate of 0.29(±0.12) × 105 per year, with cropland fires contributing to ~66% of the decrease. However, the fire counts in the northeastern NEA increased by 292% at a rate of 0.23(±0.12) × 105 per year, with boreal forests contributing to ~97% of the increase. It is worth noting that the contrasting changes in wildfires during the past two decades have led to significant structural alternation in the NEA wildfire composition. Forest fires, contributing over 60% of the total fire counts in NEA nowadays, have become the predominant component of the NEA wildfires. The contrasting changes in NEA wildfires imply that more forest fires may emerge in far northern regions of the North Hemisphere as the Arctic becomes progressively warmer in the coming decades. As wildfires continue to increase, more gases and aerosols would be released to the atmosphere and cause considerable feedback to the Arctic climate. The increased wildfire-related climate feedbacks should, therefore, be seriously considered in climate models and projections.

Observational data from the Russian sub-Arctic stations are used to investigate long-term variability of the growing season length (GSL) and the number of frost days (FD) in 1949-2013. Consistent with the global warming pattern we find a trend-like increase (decrease) of GSL (FD) which is evident since early 1970th of the last century. These trendlike changes are best pronounced at Western stations (i.e. in European Russia and western Siberia) and they are essentially smaller to the East. Although we find some significant links to regional teleconnections (such as Scandinavian, East Atlantic and West Pacific teleconnections), in general our results imply rather weak impact of large scale atmospheric dynamics on interannual variability of GSL and FD. Further analysis of correlations between GSL and FD on the one side and snow cover on the other side revealed generally stronger links to snow cover compared to teleconnections. However, revealed links to regional atmospheric teleconnections and snow cover are significantly impacted by the linear trends. In general, our results imply that compared to large scale atmospheric dynamics impacting interannual variability, snow cover (being a result of wintertime synoptic activity) plays a more important role in decadal-interdecadal variations of GSL and FD in Russian sub-Arctic, which may have some value regarding predictability of the summer climate in the region.

Ants of the «Formica picea—F. candida» complex are widespread across Eurasia. However, it is still a matter of debate if it constitutes one or two species. In this study, we collected a sample of specimens from different parts of Eurasia, sequenced the mitochondrial cox1 and cytb genes, as well as three nuclear loci—wg, Top1, and ITS2—and analyzed the available published data. We found this complex to contain a new, yet undescribed, taxon that has a large distribution in Siberia and East Asia. Thus, the «Formica picea—F. candida» complex consists of at least three taxa with distinct distributions.

The article presents the results obtained by field tectonophysical methods applied to study tectonic stresses of the Northern Eurasia regions, including young and ancient platforms (West European, Timan–Pechora, Turan, West Siberian, East European, and East Siberian) and orogenic frame structures (Caucasus, Northern Tien Shan, Mongolia-Okhotsk system of mesozoids, and Sakhalin Island). Tectonic stress reconstructions provided the basis for analysing the influence of spreading in the North Atlantics and the Arctic on the stress state of the platforms in Northern Europe. A spatial boundary of the influence goes approximately along the margins of the Fennoscandian shield and the Russian plate in the north. Further southwards, the boundary is submeridional and extends from the western wing of the Byelorussian anteclise almost to the Eastern Carpathians. The stress reconstructions for this boundary show the WNW and W-E-trending axes of compression. The boundary line does not coincide with the Teisser-Tornquist line that represents the boundary between the platforms with heterochronous basements. However, it correlates well with heat flow anomalies. The boundary area is confined to the Baltic coast [Sim, 2000. Along the boundary area, near the Baltic Sea, there is an area wherein faulting is mainly caused by extension [Sim, 2000. In this setting, helium permeability is the highest, as shown by the crust map of the European part of the USSR [Eremeev, 1983. Extension in this area is probably related to formation of young grabens in the Baltic shield. Changes in the compression axis orientation may be due to the alternating activations of the grabens in the submeridionalBotnicGulf and the latitudinalGulf of Finland. Reconstructions for individual faults show contradictions in the directions of shear displacements: both right- and left-lateral displacements are possible on the same fault segments, and the axes of compression can have either latitudinal or meridional orientations. The focal mechanisms of the Osmussaar andKaliningrad earthquakes (meridional and latitudinal axes of compression, respectively) give evidence of specific current neotectonic stresses in this area. Another zone is distinguished at 52°N from the above-described area. It is mainly sublatitudinal and detected along the southern flank of the Byelorussian anteclise. Further to the east, its orientation changes to SSW, and it roughly follows the SW boundary of theVoronezh anteclise. Reconstructions for the Ukrainian Shield, located south of this zone, show mainly the unstable orientations of the axes of compression. For the platforms inNorthern Eurasia, the tectonophysical methods reconstructed neotectonic stresses in the structures formed under the influence of intraplatform tectonic stresses. These are the residual gravitational horizontal compression stresses released by long-term denudation and uplifting of the structures, including the Khibiny massif of the Baltic Shield, theOlenek and Munsky massifs of the East Siberian platform. These structures are composed of the ancient Archaean-Proterozoic rock complexes, which have been subjected to predominantly vertical displacements for a long time, from the Paleozoic to the modern stage. Special attention should be given to the tectonic stresses ofSakhalin located at the boundary between the Eurasian and North American lithospheric plates. At the edges of these two largest plates, there are the Amur and Okhotsk microplates separated by theCentral Sakhalin fault, as described in some publications. Neotectonic stress reconstructions forSakhalinIsland show sublatitudinal compression and submeridional extension in the common stress field of shearing. The tectonophysical studies show that the neotectonic stresses differ in large structures: horizontal compression and shearing are typical of the uplifts (Kola Peninsula, Tien Shan, Sakhalin), while horizontal extension and extension with shearing are characteristic of depressions (Kandalaksha graben, depressions of theTatarGulf and theSea ofOkhotsk). Our studies provide the data on spacious ‘white spots’ in the modern stress maps ofNorthern Eurasia. The stress reconstructions for practically all the studied structures show that shearing is the dominant geodynamic regime in the study region.

A small sample of paleoanthropological materials from the burial grounds Buchta Nakhodka 2 and Yumadoto 1 in the Yamal Peninsula (Yamal district of Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug of Tyumen Region) has been studied in order to specify the nature of intra-group and inter-population variability. The morphological features of the skulls indicate their belonging to the eastern Mongoloid anthropological formation, but in terms of the nasal bridge structure, they at the same time tend to the western Caucasoid population. According to the results of multidimensional statistics, despite a high individual variability typical of the modern species of Homo sapiens, the range of variability observed in the materials from the burial grounds Buchta Nakhodka 2 and Yumadoto 1 is not beyond the scope of the inter-group variability typical of the Northern Samodians. A more representative sample of this ethnic group has been formed on this basis, which is taxonomically included in the Yamalo-Enisey group of populations of the West Siberian anthropological formation. Authors’ contribution: A.N. Bagashev and S.M. Slepchenko have made measurements of skulls, analyzed the obtained data and have written the paper; O.V. Kardash has carried out archaeological excavations of the burial ground Bukhta Nakhodka 2 and has co-written the paper.

The article is devoted to the main regularities in changes of types of alloying in the Eurasian Bronze Age. The aim of the article is to show the reasons and mechanisms of these changes. The article is based on researches by the author of the Eurasian Bronze Age slags which showed direct link of use of particular alloys with types of ore and gangue. Deviations from this rule are rare. Social processes stimulating expansion of metal consumption were a cornerstone of these changes. It led to change of the ore base that resulted in emergence of appropriate technologies of ore smelting, technologies and types of alloying and, eventually, morphology of metal artifacts. The mass transition to arsenic copper or to use of copper-arsenic ore became possible with transition from smelting rather pure pieces of malachite to smelting ore with fragments of ore-bearing rock. This type of alloying was possible in case of low-temperature smelting of oxidized ores. After the abrupt territorial expansion of metallurgical technologies and increase in amounts of metallurgical production at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, the mass use of ores from refractory rocks and coper-iron sulfides begins. It resulted in increase of smelting temperature and made impossible the alloys with arsenic because arsenic vaporized. Therefore a necessity to look for other alloying component was created. And it was tin. But, as its deposits were rare, specific conditions for its wide circulation and organization of trade and exchange network were necessary. Such conditions in Northern Eurasia were provided by migrations from east to west at first of the Seima-Turbino, and then of the Andronovo tribes. But the same processes took place in Europe and the Middle East, stimulating new social realities.

Abstract During the past several decades, the Earth system has changed significantly, especially across Northern Eurasia. Changes in the socio-economic conditions of the larger countries in the region have also resulted in a variety of regional environmental changes that can have global consequences. The Northern Eurasia Future Initiative (NEFI) has been designed as an essential continuation of the Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI), which was launched in 2004. NEESPI sought to elucidate all aspects of ongoing environmental change, to inform societies and, thus, to better prepare societies for future developments. A key principle of NEFI is that these developments must now be secured through science-based strategies co-designed with regional decision-makers to lead their societies to prosperity in the face of environmental and institutional challenges. NEESPI scientific research, data, and models have created a solid knowledge base to support the NEFI program. This paper presents the NEFI research vision consensus based on that knowledge. It provides the reader with samples of recent accomplishments in regional studies and formulates new NEFI science questions. To address these questions, nine research foci are identified and their selections are briefly justified. These foci include warming of the Arctic; changing frequency, pattern, and intensity of extreme and inclement environmental conditions; retreat of the cryosphere; changes in terrestrial water cycles; changes in the biosphere; pressures on land use; changes in infrastructure; societal actions in response to environmental change; and quantification of Northern Eurasia’s role in the global Earth system. Powerful feedbacks between the Earth and human systems in Northern Eurasia (e.g., mega-fires, droughts, depletion of the cryosphere essential for water supply, retreat of sea ice) result from past and current human activities (e.g., large-scale water withdrawals, land use, and governance change) and potentially restrict or provide new opportunities for future human activities. Therefore, we propose that integrated assessment models are needed as the final stage of global change assessment. The overarching goal of this NEFI modeling effort will enable evaluation of economic decisions in response to changing environmental conditions and justification of mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Temporal variability in erythemal radiation over Northern Eurasia (40°−80° N, 10° W−180° E) due to total ozone column (X) and cloudiness was assessed by using retrievals from ERA-Interim reanalysis, TOMS/OMI satellite measurements, and INM-RSHU chemistry−climate model (CCM) for the 1979−2015 period. For clear-sky conditions during spring and summer, consistent trends in erythemal daily doses (Eery) up to +3%/decade, attributed to decreases in X, were calculated from the three datasets. Model experiments suggest that anthropogenic emissions of ozone-depleting substances were the largest contributor to Eery trends, while volcanic aerosol and changes in sea surface temperature also played an important role. For all-sky conditions, Eery trends, calculated from the ERA-Interim and TOMS/OMI data over the territory of Eastern Europe, Siberia and Northeastern Asia, were significantly larger (up to +5−8%/decade) due to a combination of decrease in ozone and cloudiness. In contrast, all-sky maximum trends in Eery, calculated from the CCM results, were only +3−4%/decade. While Eery trends for Northern Eurasia were generally positive, negative trends were observed in July over central Arctic regions due to an increase in cloudiness. Finally, changes in the ultraviolet (UV) resources (characteristics of UV radiation for beneficial (vitamin D production) or adverse (sunburn) effects on human health) were assessed. When defining a “UV optimum” condition with the best balance in Eery for human health, the observed increases in Eery led to a noticeable reduction of the area with UV optimum for skin types 1 and 2, especially in April. In contrast, in central Arctic regions, decreases in Eery in July resulted in a change from “UV excess” to “UV optimum” conditions for skin types 2 and 3.

According to the data borrowed from the Biodat base on areas of 536 species of wood plants by means of one of methods of the cluster analysis floristic classification is made and division into districts of Northern Eurasia is executed. Three regions that, in turn, are divided into provinces and districts, are as a result allocated. The border between Southwest and Northeast regions passes diagonally from the northwest on the southeast from the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea to Altai. Such arrangement of border is caused by incomplete postglacial restoration of areas of broad-leaved tree species and modern distinctions in the hydrothermal mode. Considerable similarity of this border with carried out earlier as a result of the similar analysis of fauna of vertebrate animals though on land vertebrata it runs North – from the Kola Peninsula to Baikal is shown. Estimates of communication of variability of communities with various factors of the environment are similar, but usually on land vertebrata they are slightly higher, except for provinciality (35 and 19 % of dispersion). It testifies to more accurate reaction of animals to distinctions in the environment. The exception on provinciality is connected with more coincidence to its accepted gradation on plants (The European, West and East Siberian provinces). It is confirmed by estimates of communication with regionality – division into groups of provinces (regions) that differ on fauna and flora (29 and 38 %) less. The regime explanation of heterogeneity of flora, on the contrary, is slightly fuller, than on fauna (73 and 64 %) though the total assessment on general concepts is approximately identical (80 and 81 % of dispersion).

Stand age distribution is an important descriptor of boreal forest structure, which is directly linked to many ecosystem processes including the carbon cycle, the land–atmosphere interaction and ecosystem services, among others. Almost half of the global boreal biome is located in Russia. The vast extent, remote location, and limited accessibility of Russian boreal forests make remote sensing the only feasible approach to characterize these forests to their full extent. A wide variety of satellite observations are currently available to monitor forest change and infer its structure; however, the period of observations is mostly limited to the 2000s era. Reconstruction of wall-to-wall maps of stand age distribution requires merging longer-term site observations of forest cover change available at the Landsat scale at a subset of locations in Russia with the wall-to-wall coverage available from coarse resolution satellites since 2000. This paper presents a dataset consisting of a suite of multi-year forest disturbance samples and samples of undisturbed forests across Russia derived from Landsat Thematic Mapper and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus images from 1985 to 2000. These samples provide crucial information regarding disturbance history in selected regions across the Russian boreal forest and are designed to serve as a training and/or validation dataset for coarse resolution data products. The overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient for the entire sample collection was found to be 83.98% and 0.83%, respectively. It is hoped that the presented dataset will benefit subsequent studies on a variety of aspects of the Russian boreal forest, especially in relation to the carbon budget and climate.

The dryland belt (DLB) in Northern Eurasia is the largest contiguous dryland on Earth. During the last century, changes here have included land use change (e.g. expansion of croplands and cities), resource extraction (e.g. coal, ores, oil, and gas), rapid institutional shifts (e.g. collapse of the Soviet Union), climatic changes, and natural disturbances (e.g. wildfires, floods, and dust storms). These factors intertwine, overlap, and sometimes mitigate, but can sometimes feedback upon each other to exacerbate their synergistic and cumulative effects. Thus, it is important to properly document each of these external and internal factors and to characterize the structural relationships among them in order to develop better approaches to alleviating negative consequences of these regional environmental changes. This paper addresses the climatic changes observed over the DLB in recent decades and outlines possible links of these changes (both impacts and feedback) with other external and internal factors of contemporary regional environmental changes and human activities within the DLB.

Northern Eurasia is made up of a complex and diverse set of physical, ecological, climatic and human systems, which provide important ecosystem services including the storage of substantial stocks of carbon in its terrestrial ecosystems. At the same time, the region has experienced dramatic climate change, natural disturbances and changes in land management practices over the past century. For these reasons, Northern Eurasia is both a critical region to understand and a complex system with substantial challenges for the modeling community. This review is designed to highlight the state of past and ongoing efforts of the research community to understand and model these environmental, socioeconomic, and climatic changes. We further aim to provide perspectives on the future direction of global change modeling to improve our understanding of the role of Northern Eurasia in the coupled human–Earth system. Modeling efforts have shown that environmental and socioeconomic changes in Northern Eurasia can have major impacts on biodiversity, ecosystems services, environmental sustainability, and the carbon cycle of the region, and beyond. These impacts have the potential to feedback onto and alter the global Earth system. We find that past and ongoing studies have largely focused on specific components of Earth system dynamics and have not systematically examined their feedbacks to the global Earth system and to society. We identify the crucial role of Earth system models in advancing our understanding of feedbacks within the region and with the global system. We further argue for the need for integrated assessment models (IAMs), a suite of models that couple human activity models to Earth system models, which are key to address many emerging issues that require a representation of the coupled human–Earth system.

Freezing rain and freezing drizzle events represent a critical feature of many regions of the world. Even at low intensities, these events often result in natural hazards that cause damage to housing, communication lines, and other man-made infrastructure. These events usually occur near the 0 °C isotherm. In a changing climate, this isotherm will not disappear, but its position in space and time will likely change as will the geography of freezing precipitation. A larger influx of water vapor into the continents from the oceans may also increase the amount and frequency of freezing precipitation events. This paper assesses our current understanding of recent changes in freezing precipitation for the United States, Canada, Norway, and Russia. The research is part of a larger GEWEX Cross-Cut Project addressing ‘cold/shoulder season precipitation near 0 °C’. Using an archive of 874 long-term time series (40 years of data) of synoptic observations for these four countries, we document the climatology of daily freezing rain and freezing drizzle occurrences as well as trends therein. The regions with the highest frequency of freezing rains (from 3 to 8 days per year) reside in the northeastern quadrant of the conterminous United States and adjacent areas of southeastern Canada south of 50 °N and over the south and southwest parts of the Great East European Plain. The frequency of freezing drizzle exceeds the frequency of freezing rain occurrence in all areas. During the past decade, the frequency of freezing rain events somewhat decreased over the southeastern US. In North America north of the Arctic Circle, it increased by about 1 day yr ^−1 . Over Norway, freezing rain occurrences increased substantially, especially in the Norwegian Arctic. In European Russia and western Siberia, the frequency of freezing rain somewhat increased (except the southernmost steppe regions and the Arctic regions) while freezing drizzle frequency decreased over entire Russia.

Glaciers are widely recognized as key indicators of climate change. Recent evidence suggests an acceleration of glacier mass loss in several key mountain regions. Glacier recession implies landscape changes in the glacial zone, the origin of new lakes and activation of natural disaster processes, catastrophic mudflows, ice avalanches, outburst floods, etc. The absence or inadequacy of such information results in financial and human losses. A more comprehensive evaluation of glacier changes is imperative to assess ice contributions to global sea level rise and the future of water resources from glacial basins. One of the urgent steps is a full inventory of all ice bodies and their changes. The first estimation of glacier state and glacier distribution on the territory of the former Soviet Union has been done in the USSR Glacier Inventory (UGI) published in 1965–1982. The UGI is based on topographic maps and air photos and reflects the status of the glaciers in the 1940s–1970s. There is information about 28 884 glaciers with an area of 7830.75 km ^2 in the inventory. It covers 25 glacier systems in Northern Eurasia. In the 1980s the UGI has been transformed into digital form as a part of the World Glacier Inventory (WGI). Recent satellite data provide a unique opportunity to look again at these glaciers and to evaluate changes in glacier extent for the second part of the 20th century. About 15 000 glacier outlines for the Caucasus, Polar Urals, Pamir Alay, Tien Shan, Altai, Kamchatka and Russian Arctic have been derived from ASTER and Landsat imagery and can be used for glacier change evaluation. Results of the analysis indicate the steady trend in glacier shrinkage in all mountain regions for the second part of the 20th century. Glacier area loss for the studied regions varies from 13% (Tien Shan) to 22.3% (Polar Urals). The common driver, most likely, is an increase in summer air temperature. There is also a very large variability in the degree of individual glacier degradation, very much depending on the morphology and local meteorological conditions.

Assessing the performance of climate models in surface air temperature (SAT) simulation and projection have received increasing attention during the recent decades. This paper assesses the performance of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) in simulating intra-annual, annual and decadal temperature over Northern Eurasia from 1901 to 2005. We evaluate the skill of different multi-model ensemble techniques and use the best technique to project the future SAT changes under different emission scenarios. The results show that most of the general circulation models (GCMs) overestimate the annual mean SAT in Northern Eurasia and the difference between the observation and the simulations primarily comes from the winter season. Most of the GCMs can approximately capture the decadal SAT trend; however, the accuracy of annual SAT simulation is relatively low. The correlation coefficient R between each GCM simulation and the annual observation is in the range of 0.20 to 0.56. The Taylor diagram shows that the ensemble results generated by the simple model averaging (SMA), reliability ensemble averaging (REA) and Bayesian model averaging (BMA) methods are superior to any single GCM output; and the decadal SAT change generated by SMA, REA and BMA are almost identical during 1901–2005. Heuristically, the uncertainty of BMA simulation is the smallest among the three multi-model ensemble simulations. The future SAT projection generated by the BMA shows that the SAT in Northern Eurasia will increase in the 21st century by around 1.03 °C/100 yr, 3.11 °C/100 yr and 7.14 °C/100 yr under the RCP 2.6, RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios, respectively; and the warming accelerates with the increasing latitude. In addition, the spring season contributes most to the decadal warming occurring under the RCP 2.6 and RCP 4.5 scenarios, while the winter season contributes most to the decadal warming occurring under the RCP 8.5 scenario. Generally, the uncertainty of the SAT projections increases with time in the 21st century.

The GSHAP Regional Centre in Moscow, UIPE, has coordinated the seismic hazard mapping for the whole territory of the former U.S.S.R. and border regions. A five-year program was conducted to assemble for the whole area, subdivided in five overlapping blocks, the unified seismic catalogue with uniform magnitude, the strong motion databank and the seismic zones model (lineament-domain-source), which form the basis of a newly developed deterministic-probabilistic computation of seismic hazard assessment. The work was conducted in close cooperation with border regions and GSHAP regional centers. The hazard was originally computed in terms of expected MSK intensity and then transformed into expected peak ground acceleration with 10% exceedance probability in 50 years.

The temperature sensitivity of the snowfall season (start, end, duration) over northern Eurasia (the former USSR) is analyzed from synoptic records of 547 stations from 1966 to 2000. The results find significant correlations between temperature and snowfall season at approximately 56% of stations (61% for the starting date and 56% for the ending date) with a mean snowfall season duration temperature sensitivity of −6.2 days °C ^−1 split over the start (2.8 days) and end periods (−3.4 days). Temperature sensitivity was observed to increase with stations’ mean seasonal air temperature, with the strongest relationships at locations of around 6 °C temperature. This implies that increasing air temperature in fall and spring will delay the onset and hasten the end of snowfall events, and reduces the snowfall season length by 6.2 days for each degree of increase. This study also clarifies that the increasing trend in snowfall season length during 1936/37–1994 over northern European Russia and central Siberia revealed in an earlier study is unlikely to be associated with warming in spring and fall seasons.

We present probabilistic projections of 21st century climate change over Northern Eurasia using the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Integrated Global System Model (IGSM), an integrated assessment model that couples an Earth system model of intermediate complexity with a two-dimensional zonal-mean atmosphere to a human activity model. Regional climate change is obtained by two downscaling methods: a dynamical downscaling, where the IGSM is linked to a three-dimensional atmospheric model, and a statistical downscaling, where a pattern scaling algorithm uses climate change patterns from 17 climate models. This framework allows for four major sources of uncertainty in future projections of regional climate change to be accounted for: emissions projections, climate system parameters (climate sensitivity, strength of aerosol forcing and ocean heat uptake rate), natural variability, and structural uncertainty. The results show that the choice of climate policy and the climate parameters are the largest drivers of uncertainty. We also find that different initial conditions lead to differences in patterns of change as large as when using different climate models. Finally, this analysis reveals the wide range of possible climate change over Northern Eurasia, emphasizing the need to consider these sources of uncertainty when modeling climate impacts over Northern Eurasia.