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MOSCOW, January 24, Vladislav Strekopytov. Without taking into account Russian data, climate models will not work — especially those that describe changes in the Arctic. This conclusion was reached by participants in the project of the international network of research stations INTERACT — climatologists from Denmark, Finland, Great Britain and the USA.
How climate models work
To reliably judge global climate changes, scientists need regular observational data covering the entire Earth's surface. They are included in digital models for forecasting.
All numerical climate models are built on the same principle. The space, including the atmosphere, hydrosphere, land surface, soil cover and glaciers, is divided using a three-dimensional grid into segments, the size of which depends on the scale of the model. And then, using a complex system of differential equations, they describe the interactions between the main parameters of the climate system within and between segments.
Depending on the purpose of the models, the set of parameters may vary. Those used for weather forecasts primarily evaluate atmospheric pressure, wind speed and direction, air temperature and humidity, cloudiness and precipitation patterns. For longer-term forecasts, it is necessary to know the seasonal pattern of winds, heat transfer in the atmosphere, solar radiation, relative humidity and the state of the hydrosphere. In complex models, they are added to the temperature of the upper layers of soil and water in reservoirs, evaporation from the earth's surface, the height and condition of snow cover, all kinds of atmospheric phenomena, radiation balance and other characteristics.
Models that assess and predict global changes take into account factors , affecting the climate of the planet as a whole: surface reflectivity (albedo), the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere, the concentration of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, the balance of carbon in terrestrial systems and the World Ocean, the state of forests, swamps and permafrost.
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Reliability condition
Every year new, more complex models appear, taking into account an increasing number of parameters and connections between them. The main task of scientists is to increase the reliability of assessment and forecast constructions, that is, to minimize their deviation from empirical observations. Formally, any model in which this deviation is lower than the change in its parameters over the same period is considered reliable.
For simple models with a small number of variables, this rule can be fulfilled; for more complex ones, it is not yet possible. There have been many examples of this in recent years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the most authoritative international body created to assess the risk of global climate change, admits that existing climate models have failed to predict weather events such as the heat wave that will hit western North America in the summer of 2021 , or the devastating floods of the same year in Europe.
Experts note that for detailed and long-term forecasts it is necessary to qualitatively improve computer models, and most importantly, to thicken the observation network. It is important that the modeling takes into account data for all climatic and natural zones, including high mountain and arctic regions.
Arctic monitoring
The Arctic generally has a special role in the global climate system — it is no coincidence that it is called the “weather kitchen” of the planet. Cyclones form here, determining the nature of atmospheric currents throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Fresh water, which is formed every year when Arctic ice melts and flows into the Atlantic, is a critical element of global ocean circulation. The Arctic ice sheet helps cool the Earth, and the Arctic Ocean acts as a natural heat exchanger.
In recent years, temperatures in the Arctic have been rising about four times faster than the global average, which experts say could lead to serious global consequences. Not only the Arctic ice is melting at an accelerated pace, but also the permafrost, which was previously called permafrost. When permafrost degrades, huge amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, are released into the atmosphere. And this, in turn, leads to a further increase in temperatures.
Understanding the processes occurring in the Arctic and their impact on the global climate depends on the reliability of the primary data that is used to build models. These are provided by ground weather stations. They are found in all countries, including Russia, which is considered the largest Arctic power by territory and is a member of the Arctic Council. This intergovernmental organization coordinates cooperation in the field of environmental protection and sustainable development of the circumpolar regions.
Since 2022, Russia has been practically excluded from participating in international climate projects, and since 2023 it has not been invited to Arctic Council events.
“Projects with the participation of Russian scientists stopped receiving financial support from European and American foundations and organizations back in 2014,” says Olga Shaduiko, director of the Center for International Cooperation of Tomsk State University (TSU). “But infrastructure projects remained, for example, INTERACT, aimed at maintaining and developing a network of continuous monitoring of the climate situation in the Arctic and monitoring environmental changes in this territory. Work has been going on for 12 years, but without Russia since 2022. The same situation with Arctic Passion: it started in 2021, and a year later both of its Russian participants — TSU and the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology RAS — were excluded.»
Today there is not a single joint international project in the Arctic with the participation of universities or scientific organizations from Russia. To understand how much the lack of Russian meteorological data affected the reliability of climate modeling results, scientists from Denmark, Finland, the UK and the USA conducted a special study. As an example, we examined the work of the international network of Arctic research stations INTERACT, numbering 95 ground stations, 21 of which are located in Russia.
«Useless work»
The INTERACT project is funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. The findings are used in their work by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the Working Group on Coupled Modeling (WGCM) of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP). WGCM develops coupled climate models (CMIPs) that take into account interactions between different parts of the global climate system — the atmosphere, ocean, land and glaciers.
In 2018, WGCM completed work on the CMIP6 model, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) used in preparing the sixth assessment report on climate change (AR6), published in 2022. CMIP6 relies on data from the INTERACT network to estimate parameters such as average annual temperature, total precipitation, snow depth, soil moisture, plant biomass, primary production, soil carbon and heterotrophic respiration (wood oxidation through decay, decomposition and fire).
The authors of the study note that after excluding the results of Russian observations, the representativeness of the data dropped so much that for some variables (precipitation, soil moisture, plant biomass) deviations exceeded the magnitude of natural changes. By definition, such data is considered unreliable and cannot be used in forecasting.
«The Arctic influences climate of the planet and is under the opposite influence of more southern regions,» explains Olga Shaduyko. “Building global models without taking into account the processes occurring in the largest Arctic territory, in my opinion, is a waste of time. And if we talk about such an aspect of climate change as extreme natural phenomena , then models that have gaps in territorial coverage become completely useless.»
Global climate models have previously left much to be desired, the authors of the article admit, and now the errors in them are too large to make long-term forecasts.
«Even taking into account all Russian stations, the INTERACT network does not fully reflect ecosystem conditions throughout the pan-Arctic region,» the researchers write. «The stations tend to be located in somewhat warmer and wetter areas with deeper snow covers, lower vegetation biomass, and lower soil carbon content than in the Arctic region as a whole. <…> Excluding Russian ones stations has complicated the situation and led to a noticeable loss of representativeness for almost all ecosystem variables.»
In conclusion, the authors note that the international scientific community should strive to improve research infrastructure and create standardized monitoring programs that are representative of the entire Arctic. And this cannot be done without free exchange of data between all participants in the process.
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