ASU geographers are concerned about the climate change on Earth

In the letter, scientists asked the UN and the authorities of all states to declare a climate emergency. More than 11 thousand climatologists from 153 countries of the world put their signatures under the open letter.

Natalya F. Kharlamova, a well-known climatologist, Assistant Professor at the Department of Physical Geography and Geographic Information Systems at the Faculty of Geography of Altai State University, does not quite agree with this wording.

“In my opinion, either because of the difficulties of translation, or because of the craving of some journalists for shocking news, the wording of the open letter in the Russian-language press is presented in overly critical, black colors. You can’t scare people with such things!” the scientist said. However, one should not dismiss a problem that worries the world scientific community.

Why did people begin to talk about global warming more often and why did it become necessary to write an open letter? The first reason, according to Natalya F. Kharlamova, is that due to the increase in the population on Earth, people began to develop those territories that previous generations left untouched for a number of reasons. They had experience observing these lands, within which various kinds of cataclysms had occurred before, and now they are more often subjected to natural tests.

The second reason is information openness and accessibility. Information is spreading quickly even about a small, local incident, and much is said about significant events everywhere. Thus, it turns out a kind of continuous flow of sometimes quite negative information on this topic.

The third reason is that the calls of climatologists to pay more attention to the processes of global natural changes remain without due attention. Much attention is paid to improving the quality of weather forecasts, and at the same time, still some first-level specialists who receive primary weather data needed for further research work in very difficult conditions. At many weather stations, most of them are women who must go to the meteorological site every 3 hours, regardless of the weather and the surrounding reality.

“Scientific communities are turning to government agencies with recommendations to pay closer attention to ongoing and predicted climatic changes, the result of which is a significant increase in adverse increasingly widespread weather events! However, the distressing situation surrounding the signing of the Paris Agreement to Combat Global Warming clearly reflects a misunderstanding of the importance and scale of the problem affecting all of humanity. In my opinion, this is why the world scientific community has made another attempt and drafted an open letter to the UN with a request to pay attention to this problem, which requires an accelerated solution, and especially in the context of an increase in population and industrial production, a decrease in biodiversity on the planet and the influence of others processes. In my opinion, it is really necessary to pay closer attention to the problem of global climate change, especially since we do not have well-reasoned accumulated knowledge about how quickly the warming process can develop on Earth,” Natalya Kharlamova noted.

According to the climatologist of Altai State University, scientists are afraid of this, fixing the annually increasing rates of warming, the catastrophic consequences of which they are trying to prevent in advance.

“Each inhabitant of our planet needs to be more careful with the world around him. Despite the banality and excessive pathos of this statement, this approach can help prevent irreversible processes. We will not be able to fly to another planet, we should live here, and we must save the Earth for other generations. Much depends on the leaders of states, on authorities at various levels, which should already face the problem of climate change. It is time to take more decisive steps towards resolving this issue!” Natalya Kharlamova summed up.

It is to be added that at present, experts from Altai State University have installed six automatic weather stations on the territory of the region, thanks to which new data are obtained on the regional characteristics of climate variability.