Table of contents

These Conference Proceedings contain the selected papers of the 9^th multidisciplinary Conference ENVIROMIS-2016 comprising elements of Early Career Scientists School held at Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems SB RAS, Tomsk, Russia, on July 11-16, 2016.

The conference was devoted to the state-of-the-art and usage of modern environmental observation techniques, computational and information technologies for monitoring and assessment of Northern Eurasia environment variations including those caused by the Global Climate Change. During the conference, a total of 111 manuscripts were presented and discussed in a series of successive presentations. All the contributions in this volume have been peer reviewed according to rigorous international standards. However the authors take full responsibility for the content of their papers.

The conference was organized by Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems SB RAS, Institute of Numerical Mathematics RAS, Research Computing Center of Moscow State University and Tomsk State University. It was supported by Russian Foundation for Basic Research and by P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology RAS under Megagrant of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation «Extra-tropical hydrological cycle in the current and future climate: uncertainties and predictability)).

We are grateful to all of the reviewers for maintaining the standards and quality of the manuscripts throughout the reviewing process.

All papers published in this volume of IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science have been peer reviewed through processes administered by the proceedings Editors. Reviews were conducted by expert referees to the professional and scientific standards expected of a proceedings journal published by IOP Publishing.

The paper describes a regular multidisciplinary conference and early carrier scientists' school ENVIROMIS as a tool for facilitation of cooperation of specialists in different fields of environmental sciences and users of research results. The conference addresses critically important issues occurring in environmental sciences, namely, crossing disciplinary borders of this multidisciplinary research area, young scientists' training and diminishing a gap between science and decision-making. The viability of the approach to the Schools organization is proved by the fact that single event turned into a series, quite a few young participants successfully defended their PhD thesis and a number of researchers became Doctors of Science, several international multidisciplinary projects, initiated at these conferences, have been successfully carried out. Researchers from Russia and foreign countries show undiminishing interest to these conferences.

Geospheric processes are largely initiated and controlled by external influences. The Sun is the main source of energy, and it contributes to those processes directly and as a regulator of some cosmic influences. The forcing effects synchronize the oscillatory processes in the solar system. Specific processes differ in energy. However, they show similar essential signs. Components, which differ in coincidence and non-coincidence of the essential signs, are introduced. Based on a synchronous analysis of the monthly averaged Wolf numbers series and temperatures registered at 818 weather stations in the Northern Hemisphere (1955-2010), we show that the above-introduced components of the series under consideration have extreme properties. The histograms of the primary temperature series coincide with those of their components, except for a range of ± 3°C. The second initial moments of the Wolf numbers correspond to the climate geography and can be divided into two zones, the width and the distance between them are about one third of all possible changes. A synchronicity principle allows performing a decomposition of the original set into subsets containing strongly related elements. The relationship between the synchronization features of geospheric processes initiated by external forcing and the physical and geographical hierarchy allows solving some problems of classification. Some experimental results for the temperature field are presented. The approach has revealed some new properties of the solar-terrestrial relations. No inconsistencies with the known notions of climatic processes have been found.

A great increase in air temperature has been observed since 1976. Siberia is a region with most severe ongoing climate change. To monitor the extreme weather events is important. To evaluate moisture conditions we used the D.A. Ped index (S_i). Monthly air temperature and precipitation data from 19 weather stations of South Eastern Siberia (50-60° N 90-120° E) were used for the index calculation during the vegetation period. During 1976-2010 the number of droughts in the study region was more than the number of excessive moisture periods. The maximal statistically significant trend (0.4-0.6 per 10 years) in Eastern Siberia was observed in May. The characteristics of the winter-spring period preceding the vegetation season were analyzed. Significant positive trends exist in the study area for the May temperature (0.5-0.9 °C per 10 years) and the May sum of positive temperatures (14-28 °C per 10 years). There are tendencies to increase the number of days with temperatures above zero in March (1-3 days per 10 years) and the sum of positive temperatures in April (5-16 °C per 10 years). The stable transition of air temperature over 0 °C shifts into early dates by 1-7 days every 10 years.

In this paper, some hydrophysical and meteorological characteristics of negative (1948-1976 and 1999-2015) and positive (1977-1998) phases of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) in the North Atlantic and Eurasia are constructed and investigated. Specifically, the near-surface temperature, sea-level atmospheric pressure, wind speed, heat content of the upper 700 m ocean layer, water temperature and salinity at various depths, the latent and sensible heat fluxes from the ocean to the atmosphere are analyzed. The fields obtained are in good agreement and complement each other. This gives important information about the hydrometeorological conditions in the region under study. Analysis of these data has shown that in the upper 1000 m North Atlantic layer there is a thermal dipole which can be interpreted as an oceanic analog of the atmospheric North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). An index of the North Atlantic Dipole (NAD) as the difference between the mean heat contents in the upper 700 m oceanic layer between the regions (50°-70° N; 60°-10° W) and (20°-40° N; 80°-30° W) is proposed. A possible physical mechanism of the internal oscillations with a quasi-60-year period in the North Atlantics- Eurasia system of ocean-atmosphere interactions is discussed.

Land surface schemes (LSS or terrestrial models) are a crucial component of both Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) systems and climate models. An important land- surface type is lakes. This paper presents the mechanism of incorporation of a model LAKE into a coupled general circulation model of the atmosphere and ocean INMCM4, with a space resolution 2° to 1.5° and 21 levels in height, with two-way interaction. A new map for 14 land types distribution was created using a digital map of inland waters for the entire globe. The digital map of water bodies includes the fraction of lake area on the land surface, and the average depth of water bodies, both on the grid of the climate model. This digital map is based on a dataset consisting of 14 000 freshwater lakes. In order to increase the time step in the LAKE model, the k-ε parameterization has been replaced by the parameterization of Henderson-Sellers. With the amended INMCM4 model, numerical experiments were carried out to simulate global climate during the second half of the XX century. The effects of the new lake parameterization on the surface temperature and heat fluxes are analyzed.

Statistical data treatment is an essential part of climate and weather modeling. The Kolmogorov goodness-of-fit test is a widely applicable statistical method to determine the cumulative distribution function of a continuous random variable, e.g., a precipitation level, wind force, etc. In this paper, the authors consider a problem of goodness-of-fit testing involving additional information about S-symmetry of the cumulative distribution function and its influence on the Kolmogorov statistic distributions. A definition of S-symmetry is given; it is a generalized classical definition of distribution symmetry. It is proved that any continuous increasing cumulative distribution function is S-symmetric. A uniform distribution is considered as an example of an S-symmetric distribution. A modification of the Kolmogorov statistic using additional information about the new type of symmetry is proposed. The exact and asymptotic distributions under the null and the alternative hypothesis of the modified statistics are described. The authors also provide an example which proves that the modified test is more powerful than the non-modified one. The new test is used to check the hypothesis of a uniform distribution of the average sum of precipitation.

A statistical analysis of extreme weather events over coastal areas of the Russian Arctic based on observational data has revealed many interesting features of wind velocity distributions. It has been shown that the extremes contain data belonging to two different statistical populations. Each of them is reliably described by a Weibull distribution. According to the standard terminology, these sets of extremes are named 'black swans' and 'dragons'. The 'dragons' are responsible for most extremes, surpassing the 'black swans' by 10 - 30 %. Since the data of the global climate model INM-CM4 do not contain 'dragons', the wind speed extremes are investigated on the mesoscale using the COSMO-CLM model. The modelling results reveal no differences between the 'swans' and 'dragons' situations. It could be associated with the poor sample data used. However, according to many case studies and modeling results we assume that it is caused by a rare superposition of large-scale synoptic factors and many local meso- and microscale factors (surface, coastline configuration, etc.). Further studies of extreme wind speeds in the Arctic, such as 'black swans' and 'dragons', are necessary to focus on non-hydrostatic high-resolution atmospheric modelling using downscaling techniques.

The Aktru mountain glacier basin (the North-Chuya Ridge, Altai Mountains) is a region of highly important ecosystems. We have been performing a monitoring of the autotrophic component of the basin ecosystems for the last 16 years. The primary indicator species with the most clearly defined response to climatic changes are Siberian stone pine and Siberian larch with their individuals and populations. The ecosystem level of the monitoring includes that of old forests, ecotone ecosystems, and ecosystems on the new moraines. The old forests have remained stable for about 1000 years. The reasons for this stability are the long lifespan and the long generative stage of stone pine and larch, their ability to produce several growth forms, optimal ecological conditions of the basin for these species and high a-diversity of the old forests. The treeline has moved up by 100-200 m for the last 150 years and by 40-90 m for the last 40 years, mostly because of an invasion of stone pine to the ecotone. The primary successions on the moraines are also relatively stable, although at present only stone pine has been involved in the successions. No regeneration of larch has been observed for the last 16 years in the entire basin.

In this paper, regional features of a climatogenic response of the middle-taiga permafrost landscapes of Central Siberia, as well as corresponding transformations of the exodynamic processes, are considered. Lithological-geomorphologic and landscape- geocryological data are analyzed with large amounts of actual data and results of monitoring surveys. Specific features of an ecotone localization of middle-taiga permafrost landscapes and their typical physiognomic characteristics are described. A comprehensive investigation of representative key sites makes it possible to discover the response of different types of permafrost landscapes to regional climate warming. A rapid increase in the active layer depth, slower creep, transformations of the moving kurums, intensive solifluction, and a local replacement of solifluction by landslides-earthflows are revealed within ecotone landscapes of the cryolithozone.

In this article, data of reconstruction of the dynamics of plant communities, water regimes, geocryological conditions, and peat accumulation of the khasyrey of Central Yamal Peninsula located in the tundra of Western Siberia by traditional paleoecological methods on the basis of detailed studies of the botanical composition, degree of decomposition, density, ash content and δ¹³C in the cellulose of peat cut pulp age about 1300 cal. BP are considered. It has been shown that the khasyrey has a sensitive response on century and decadal scales to climate change and the lake regime level. Moreover, the stages of khasyrey functional state are in a good agreement with similar data on mires of the forest zone of Western Siberia and the solar activity periods.

In recent years, some general circulation models have been improved by using stable water isotopologues, such as HDO (δD) and H₂¹⁸O (δ¹⁸O). In this paper, the results of a study of the isotopic composition of precipitation sampled in the winter seasons of 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 in Altai foothills are presented. The isotopic composition varied greatly: from -17.4 ‰ to -30.63 ‰ for δ¹⁸O and from -132.1 ‰ to -235.0 ‰ for δD in 2014-2015; from -15.9 %" to -26.8 ‰ for δ¹⁸D and from -118.5 ‰ to -207.7 ‰ for δD in 2015-2016. The weighted average values of δ¹⁸O and δD for both seasons were close to each other (-21.2 ‰ and -160.1 ‰ for the first season and -20.4 ‰ and -157.5 ‰ for the second season), while the values of d_exc differed significantly. A trajectory analysis (by the Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory - (HYSPLIT) model) has shown that the difference in the isotopic composition of the precipitation is largely associated with the change of the main source regions of atmospheric moisture, namely, the change of the North Atlantic waters (the 2014-2015 winter season) for the inland waters (the 2015-2016 winter season). A comparison of the results of an isotopic analysis has shown good agreement with data of the Global Network of Isotopes in Precipitation (GNIP) interpolated for 1960-2010. Thus, with a proper interpretation the data of the isotopic composition of the winter precipitation in Altai foothills can be used for this territory as an alternative source of the GNIP network data.

This paper overviews a method of generating climate regions based on an analytic signal theory. When applied to atmospheric surface layer temperature data sets, the method allows forming climatic structures with the corresponding changes in the temperature to make conclusions on the uniformity of climate in an area and to trace the climate changes in time by analyzing the type group shifts. The algorithm is based on the fact that the frequency spectrum of the thermal oscillation process is narrow-banded and has only one mode for most weather stations. This allows using the analytic signal theory, causality conditions and introducing an oscillation phase. The annual component of the phase, being a linear function, was removed by the least squares method. The remaining phase fluctuations allow consistent studying of their coordinated behavior and timing, using the Pearson correlation coefficient for dependence evaluation. This study includes program experiments to evaluate the calculation efficiency in the phase grouping task. The paper also overviews some single-threaded and multi-threaded computing models. It is shown that the phase grouping algorithm for meteorological data can be parallelized and that a multi-threaded implementation leads to a 25-30% increase in the performance.

The first results of simulation of the seasonal variability of the Arctic and North Atlantic ocean waters and ice by a coupled model based on a full three-dimensional ocean dynamics model INMIO4.1 and a sea-ice model CICE5.1 are considered. The coupled model can be run on massively parallel computers under control of the Compact Modelling Framework CMF2.0. The numerical experiment is performed according to the CORE-II protocol with 1948 atmospheric forcing data. Possible causes of the deviation of the model solution from the ERA-20C reanalysis and WOA09 climatology are discussed.

A 15-year-old low-water period in the basin of Lake Baikal established an endurance record in the entire history of observations. It began in the mid 90s of the last century. With some probability it may continue in the following years. An analysis of meteorological series of air temperature and precipitation in the region is conducted. A statistically significant trend of increasing temperature and decreasing rainfall is revealed. Atmospheric precipitation affects the long-term fluctuations in the river run-off to a greater extent than the other elements of the water balance. An analysis of the inflow of water into Lake Baikal is performed. It is found that the water level of the lake almost directly depends on the water content of the Selenga River. The minimal run-off in dry periods, as well as the annual run-off, tends to decrease. It is a continuous series of low run-off, which provided the negative trend in the minimal run-off. A dendrochronological reconstruction of the Selenga River run-off is made. A statistically significant trend of decreasing Selenga River run-off is revealed in the recent decades, and an analysis of temperature and precipitation for the basin on the Russian side is made.

At present much attention is given to the spatio-temporal dynamics of plant communities of steppes to assess their response to the current climate changes. In this study, a mapping of a selected modeling polygon was carried out on the basis of data decoding and field surveys of vegetation cover in the semi-arid zone. The resulting large-scale map of actual vegetation reflects the current state of the vegetation cover and its horizontal structure. It is a valuable material for monitoring of changes in the chosen area. With multi-temporal satellite Landsat imagery we consider the vegetation cover dynamics of the test range. To analyze the transformation of the environment by the climatic factors, we compared series of NDVI versus the precipitation and of NDVI versus the temperatures. Then we calculated the degree of correlation between them.

Starting in the eighties of the 20^th century, the scientists of the Baikal Institute of Nature Management (BINM SB RAS) have been conducting field observations of the Transbaikalia geosystems transformation due to the change of climate and nature management. An utmost importance is placed on the study of a negative response of the land geosystems. This is shown through their deterioration, degradation, and desertification in particular. Through the years of research (1985-2015) in dry areas of the north of Central Asia, the scientists of the BINM SB RAS established a network of key sites for contact monitoring of the status and dynamics of the geosystems and the negative natural-anthropogenic processes along the Baikal-Gobi meridional transect (51-44° N, 105-107° E). The monitoring of the status and dynamics of the vegetation cover of some key sites is conducted by processing and analysis of multitemporal and multispectral Landsat and MODIS Terra imagery. An automatic analysis of the time variation of NDVI and a comparison with the progress of the index in the previous seasons are performed. The landscape indication of the key sites is made on the basis of satellite imagery and complete geobotanical descriptions. Landscape profiles and facies maps with natural boundaries are created.

Summer 2012 was one of the extreme wildfire years in Siberia. At the surface air monitoring station "ZOTTO" (60°48'N, 89°21'E, 114 m a.s.l.) in Central Siberia we observed biomass burning (BB) influence on the ongoing atmospheric measurements within more than 50 % of the time in June-July 2012 that indicates a 30 times greater wildfire signal compared to previously reported ordinary biomass burning signature for the study area. While previous studies thoroughly estimated a relative input of BB into aerosol composition (i.e. size distribution, physical and optical parameters etc.) at ZOTTO, in this paper we characterize the source apportionment of the smoke aerosols with molecular tracer techniques from large-scale wildfires occurred in 2012 in the two prevailing types of Central Siberian ecosystems: complexes of pine forests and bogs and dark coniferous forests. Wildfires in the selected ecosystems are highly differed by their combustion phase (flaming/smoldering), the type of fire (crown/ground), biomass fuel, and nature of soil that greatly determines the smoke particle composition. Anhydrosugars (levoglucosan and its isomers) and lignin phenols taken as indicators of the sources and the state of particulate matter (PM) inputs in the specific fire plumes were used as powerful tools to compare wildfires in different environmental conditions and follow the role and contribution of different sources of terrestrial organic matter in the transport of BB pollutants into the pristine atmosphere of boreal zone in Central Siberia.

The subarctic rivers of the Central Siberian Plateau have specific fed-characteristics due to the permafrost distribution and the active layer thawing dynamics. Two watersheds with different types of permafrost (from insular to continuous) are studied. Different data sources (Roshydromet and our own observations) are used for receiving anions' (HCO₃-, SO₄^2-, Cl^-) and cations' (Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺) fluxes from the Nizhnyaya Tunguska river (1960-2011) and the Tembenchi river (1970-2011). The annual discharge of N. Tunguska for 1939-2011 is characterized by an increase of 0.3 km³/year/year, and for Tembenchi, 0.04 km³/year/year. The major part of the increase (about 60%) is due to spring flooding (May - June). The volume-weighted mean concentrations of major anions and cations in the N. Tunguska river water increased three times in the spring period (40.7 - 116.8 mg/l) and in the summer-fall period (74-212.9 mg/l). On the contrary, such concentrations decreased sharply during the winter mean water period. Due to these results, the total export of main anions and cations from the N. Tunguska river basin rose more than 4,5 times. Two possible reasons can be identified: 1) a water discharge increase of the Subarctic rivers (Peterson et al., 2002); 2) permafrost degradation induced by global climate warming (Frey and McClelland 2009).

Peat has a wide range of applications in different spheres of human activity, and this is a reason for a comprehensive study. This research represents the results of an ICP-MS study of moss and peat samples from two raised bogs of Germany. Because of the wide use of sphagnum moss and peat, determining their geochemical characteristics is an important issue. According to the results obtained, we can resume that the moss samples from Germany are rich in Cu, As, Y, Zr, Nb, and REE. The geochemical composition of the bogs reflects the regional environmental features and anthropogenic influence.

We discuss some aspects of the development of a variational approach to study the dynamics of climatic and ecological systems under intensive actions of natural and anthropogenic origin. The variational principle essentially represents a versatile tool to create a consistent modeling technology based on models of processes coupled with available observational data. The basic entities included in the formulation of the variational principle are models of processes; data and models of observations; target criteria for forecasting; a priori information about all the required elements of the system. We develop a set of mathematical models combined within the framework of the variational principle. They describe the dynamics of the atmosphere and water bodies in conjunction with a thermally and dynamically heterogeneous surface of the Earth; the hydrological cycle, moisture in the atmosphere and the soil; radiation transfer in the system of the atmosphere and the underlying surface; and transport and transformation of various substances in gaseous and aerosol states in the atmosphere. As an example, we demonstrate the results of calculations performed with a set of numerical models adapted to the conditions of a Novosibirsk city agglomeration. The results of scenario calculations on the formation of mesoclimates and quality of the atmosphere for the typical conditions of Siberian cities are presented.

The performance of a variational data assimilation algorithm for a transport and transformation model of atmospheric chemical composition is studied numerically in the case where the emission inventories are missing while there are additional in situ indirect concentration measurements. The algorithm is based on decomposition and splitting methods with a direct solution of the data assimilation problems at the splitting stages. This design allows avoiding iterative processes and working in real-time. In numerical experiments we study the sensitivity of data assimilation to measurement data quantity and quality.

In this paper, the content of mercury in poplar leaves in the Novokuznetsk industrial agglomeration and along the automobile route Novokuznetsk-Mezhdurechensk is assessed. The geoecological indicators are also calculated.

The results of an airborne survey of plumes from the Norilsk Mining and Metallurgical Plant by an Optik-É AN-30 aircraft laboratory on November 10, 2002 are discussed. Most pollutants are blown out of the city in the gas phase in the form of acidic oxides (mainly sulfur). Mapping of the substances is performed along the main trajectory of air mass transport at a distance of 20-140 km from the city. Horizontal flights were performed at 400, 600, 800, and 1200 m above sea level at equidistant traverses (from 3 to 6 at each height) normally to the main flow direction. Most pollution was concentrated above the 400-m level. An active gas-to-particle conversion was observed at a distance of 60-100 km from the emission source. In the plume areas distant from the source there was a sulfate anion increase from 4% to 51% in aerosol composition weight and a calcium decrease from 64% to 9%. Under the conditions of low humidity in the polar atmosphere in winter, SO₂ is apparently removed from the air mainly due to dry heterogeneous condensation with calcium oxide as the main counteragent of industrial origin. The concentrations of these active pollutants in the plume are well approximated by a two-parameter transformation model.

Two types of nonhydrostatic meteorological models are applied to modeling of front wave propagation: a finite-difference model based on a terrain-following coordinate transformation and a finite-element model based on triangular elements. The former is used for a relatively smooth orography, and the latter for steep surfaces. The front surface is described in both models by an equation for advection of a scalar substance, which is solved with a third- order semi-Lagrangian procedure. Various meteorological effects, the influence of stratification and the introduction of an inversion layer above an orographic obstacle are investigated and discussed.

Possibilities of sodar application for investigation of the spatiotemporal dynamics of three components of wind velocity vector, longitudinal and transverse structural functions of wind velocity field, structural characteristics of temperature and wind velocity, turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate, and outer scales of temperature and dynamic turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer are analyzed. The original closed iterative algorithm of sodar data processing taking into account the classical and molecular absorption and the turbulent sound attenuation on the propagation path is used that allows the vertical profiles of the characteristics of temperature and wind velocity field to be reconstructed simultaneously and their interrelations to be investigated. It is demonstrated how the structure of temperature and wind turbulence is visualised in real time.

In this paper, a method of using the Earth's natural pulsed electromagnetic noise for mapping of anomalies of intensely strained state of the Earth's crust is substantiated. Examples of using the method for mapping of geodynamically dangerous sites and monitoring of processes that pose threats to the operation of industrial facilities are presented.

In this paper, the authors propose a method for determining the main forms of clouds using an analysis of the diurnal variation of direct and diffuse solar radiation. This approach allows operating the process of determining the sky state automatically, which in most cases requires the presence of an observer at the point of measurement. For this purpose, the authors use the direct radiation transmission ratio and diffuse radiation changes with respect to cloudless sky, which have specific values for various forms and types of clouds. The method can be especially effective in cases where measurement of the basic characteristics of radiation is carried out with automatized actinometrical complexes.

This paper presents the argumentation in favor of a hypothesis of the eccentric rotation of the Earth's shell and core. It covers the algorithm and computation of movement path and position of the Earth's core by the Earth's natural pulse electromagnetic field characteristics.

This article shows the potential of using δ¹³C values of pollutants in snow pack to study the human impact on the environment of Tomsk and its surroundings. We believe that it is possible to use a relation between the isotope compositions of a fuel and black carbon for establishing the origin of the latter. The main object of our investigation was dust accumulated by the snow pack in the winter of 2015-2016. The study of dust samples included the following steps: determination of the total carbon content in snow pack samples of Tomsk and its surroundings, extraction of black carbon from the dust, as well as the determination of δ¹³C values of the total and black carbon accumulated in the snow pack. A snow survey was carried out on the 26th of January and on the 18th of March. The relative carbon content in the dust samples was determined by using an EA Flash 2000 element analyzer. It varied from 3 to 24%. The maximum carbon content was in the dust samples from areas of cottage building with individual heating systems. The δ¹³C values of the total and black carbon were determined by using a DELTA V Advantage isotope mass spectrometer (TomTsKP SB RAS). The isotope composition of black carbon corresponded to that of the original fuel. This fact allowed identifying the origin of black carbon in some areas of Tomsk.

We present a storage and processing model for climate datasets elaborated in the framework of a virtual research environment (VRE) for climate and environmental monitoring and analysis of the impact of climate change on the socio-economic processes on local and regional scales. The model is based on a «shared nothings» distributed computing architecture and assumes using a computing network where each computing node is independent and selfsufficient. Each node holds a dedicated software for the processing and visualization of geospatial data providing programming interfaces to communicate with the other nodes. The nodes are interconnected by a local network or the Internet and exchange data and control instructions via SSH connections and web services. Geospatial data is represented by collections of netCDF files stored in a hierarchy of directories in the framework of a file system. To speed up data reading and processing, three approaches are proposed: a precalculation of intermediate products, a distribution of data across multiple storage systems (with or without redundancy), and caching and reuse of the previously obtained products. For a fast search and retrieval of the required data, according to the data storage and processing model, a metadata database is developed. It contains descriptions of the space-time features of the datasets available for processing, their locations, as well as descriptions and run options of the software components for data analysis and visualization. The model and the metadata database together will provide a reliable technological basis for development of a high- performance virtual research environment for climatic and environmental monitoring.

This paper describes a software system designed to support atmospheric studies with ultrasonic thermo-anemometer data processing. The system is capable of processing files containing sets of immediate values of temperature, three orthogonal wind velocity components, humidity, and pressure. The paper presents a technological scheme for selecting the necessary meteorological parameters depending on the observation time, the averaging interval, and the period between the immediate values. The data processing consists of three stages. At the initial stage, a query for the necessary meteorological parameters is executed. At the second stage, the system calculates the standard statistical characteristics of the meteorological fields, such as mean values, dispersion, standard deviation, asymmetric coefficients, kurtosis, correlation, etc. The third stage prepares to compute the atmospheric turbulence parameters. The system creates new arrays of data to process and calculate the second order statistical moments that are important for solving problems of atmospheric surface layer physics, predicting the pollutant dispersion in the atmosphere, etc. The calculation results are visualized and stored on a hard disk.

Modern global climate changes are characterized by a significant warming started in the late 1970s. According to the observation data, the average rate of warming in Russia for 1976-2012 was 0.43 °C/10 years. Additionally, the trend of annual precipitation for the same period in most parts of Russia is positive. To study the integral climate characteristics of a region, in particular, hydrothermal conditions, is of great interest. A new software module for the assessment of aridity was developed and added to an information and computing web system called "Climate". The well-known hydrothermal coefficient of Selyaninov (HTC) was used with ECMWF ERA Interim reanalysis data for the period from 1979 to 2010. The input data (precipitation, temperature, HTC) were validated using observation data from weather stations. It was found that the ERA Interim data substantially (by 50%) underestimated the measured precipitation in the study region. The precipitation was corrected by the results. New spatially distributed precipitation and HTC data were obtained. The web system "Climate" is based on web and GIS techniques and is part of a hardware and software complex for "cloud" analysis of climatic data. It includes several climatological and meteorological datasets, as well as dedicated software modules for searching, selection, extraction, and visualization of data.

We present an approach and first results of a collaborative project being carried out by a joint team of researchers from the Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems, Russia and Earth Systems Research Center UNH, USA. Its main objective is development of a hardware and software platform prototype of a Distributed Research Center (DRC) for monitoring and projecting of regional climatic and environmental changes in the Northern extratropical areas. The DRC should provide the specialists working in climate related sciences and decision-makers with accurate and detailed climatic characteristics for the selected area and reliable and affordable tools for their in-depth statistical analysis and studies of the effects of climate change. Within the framework of the project, new approaches to cloud processing and analysis of large geospatial datasets (big geospatial data) inherent to climate change studies are developed and deployed on technical platforms of both institutions. We discuss here the state of the art in this domain, describe web based information-computational systems developed by the partners, justify the methods chosen to reach the project goal, and briefly list the results obtained so far.

The Rapid Integrated Mapping and analysis System (RIMS) has been developed at the University of New Hampshire as an online instrument for multidisciplinary data visualization, analysis and manipulation with a focus on hydrological applications. Recently it was enriched with data and tools to allow more sophisticated analysis of interdisciplinary data. Three different examples of specific scientific applications with RIMS are demonstrated and discussed. Analysis of historical changes in major components of the Eurasian pan-Arctic water budget is based on historical discharge data, gridded observational meteorological fields, and remote sensing data for sea ice area. Express analysis of the extremely hot and dry summer of 2010 across European Russia is performed using a combination of near-real time and historical data to evaluate the intensity and spatial distribution of this event and its socioeconomic impacts. Integrative analysis of hydrological, water management, and population data for Central Asia over the last 30 years provides an assessment of regional water security due to changes in climate, water use and demography. The presented case studies demonstrate the capabilities of RIMS as a powerful instrument for hydrological and coupled human-natural systems research.

The correlation of precipitation anomalies over Eurasia with atmospheric blocking events was examined with ERA Interim reanalysis data. We found that, regardless of the frequency of the atmospheric blocking events, they significantly affect the distribution of rainfall over all Eurasian regions in summer, due to both the change in the westerly transport and the dominant dipole blocking structure. It is important that, depending on the blocking positions in Asia, there are heavy rainfalls in an arid zone which includes Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Northern China, and the Trans-Baikal Territory.