Between 3 and 5 October, the international scientific conference “Global Climate Changes: Regional Effects, Models, and Forecasts” took place at the Faculty of Geography, Geoecology, and Tourism. The event was held with the participation of the Voronezh office of the Russian Geographical Society. This conference is very timely as there has been a growing interest among scientists and meteorologists in understanding the basic causes, consequences, and forecast models for global climate changes that are happening in different regions of Russia and worldwide.
The conference was supported by a grant of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and its programme was shaped by specialists from the leading scientific and experimental organisations in the area of hydrometeorology, geoecology, and management of natural resources of Russia (Russian Meteorological Office, Russian Hydrometeorological Society, Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Faculty of Geography of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Voyeikov Main Geophysical Observatory, and others).
The goal of the event was to discuss and analyse reasons, regional peculiarities, and forecast models of global climate changes that are taking place in different regions of Russia and worldwide, including hydrometerological, landscape, environmental, social, and medical impact of the planetary processes. Leading Russian climatologists, hydrologists, and educators in geography and environmental studies came to Voronezh to discuss these problems.
The plenary session included reports of the key scientists from the Hydrometeorological Research Centre of the Russian Federation, the Faculty of Geography of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russian Hydrometeorological Society, Voyeikov Main Geophysical Observatory, National Research Institute of Hydrometeorological Information – World Data Centre, the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Perm National Research State University, Zubov State Oceanological Institute, Institute of Water Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics, and foreign participants from the Azerbaijanian Academy of Sciences, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, and Donetsk National University.
On 4 October, the conference continued and the current issues of hydrometeorology, climate aspects of landscape studies, social, economical, and medical geography were debated in round table discussions. A lot of attention was paid to modern methods of climate study and predictive scenarios of global warming.
The conference concluded with a presentation by VSU hydrometerological observatory and the signing of a very important document: “Strategic approaches to providing ecological safety in Russia under modern climate changes”. Its goal is to develop a climate observing system in the Russian Federation, measures aimed to adapting economics and the society to the climate changes to raise the level of ecological safety of the population and to prevent effects of negative climate processes (atmospheric drought, extreme water content, fire hazard, infectious disease dissemination, ecological risks, etc.). The document is to reinforce “Plan of action to implement the Strategy of ecological safety in the Russian Federation for the period up to 2025” (approved by the Government of the Russian Federation on 25.05.2019). The adopted resolution specifies that global climate change should be considered a priority of the state policy and the need for governmental support, i.e. financial and infrastructure support of applied climate research and the development in Russia of a network of educational hydrometeorology and ecological safety centres.
After the conference, the participants had a chance to visit the Voronezh biosphere nature reserve.
