Global Warming

Russia warming '2.5 times quicker' than global average

Russia is warming more than twice as fast as the average for the rest of the world, the environment ministry said Friday, sounding an alarm on the rise in floods and wildfires nationwide.

A government report on environmental protection said temperatures in Russia had warmed by 0.42 degrees Celsius per decade since 1976, or 2.5 times quicker than the global warming trend of 0.17 degrees.

"Climate change leads to growth of dangerous meteorological phenomena," the ministry said in a comment to the report published Friday.

There were 569 such phenomena in Russia in 2014, "the most since monitoring began," the ministry said, specifically mentioning last year's ravaging floods and this year's "water deficit" east of Lake Baikal, which led to a "catastrophic rise in fires."

Fires around Lake Baikal, including the nearby Irkutsk and Buryatia regions, tore through hundreds of square miles in the pristine area, with locals and campers forced to dig ditches as state media at one point offered the theory that fires were fuelled by "self-igniting air" caused by ozone anomalies.

Climate change has contributed to unprecedented loss of water in the Baikal itself, dropping to minimal water levels allowed by the government several times this year, including this week.