A recent multidisciplinary compilation of studies on changes in the Siberian environment details how climate is changing faster than most places on Earth with exceptional warming in the north and increased aridity in the south. Impacts of these changes are rapid permafrost thaw and melt of glaciers, increased flooding, extreme weather events leading to sudden changes in biodiversity, increased forest fires, more insect pest outbreaks, and increased emissions of CO2 and methane. These trends interact with sociological changes leading to land-use change, globalisation of diets, impaired health of Arctic Peoples, and challenges for transport. Local mitigation and adaptation measures are likely to be limited by a range of public perceptions of climate change that vary according to personal background. However, Siberia has the possibility through land surface feedbacks to amplify or suppress climate change impacts at potentially global levels. Based on the diverse studies presented in this Ambio Special Issue, we suggest ways forward for more sustainable environmental research and management.

This contribution relates to preparatory efforts for creating a transnational, multilinguistic visualisation tool of past, present, forecasted and future (weather and) climate information in Europe, targeted to a large range of users. There is no scarcity of observed or modelled climate data, especially in Europe. However, existing climate information are often hidden, poorly explained or not accessible (in their complexity and structure) for non-scientists in many countries, especially in Eastern Europe and Russia. Needed are hence clear, reliable, and concise facts to easily understand the complex topic of climate change, supported by a high spatial resolution of climate information for local concernment. We identified two superordinated target groups: 1) decision makers, demanding easily accessible and digestible, as well as for decision making processes usable climate information and 2) educational institutions and the general public, who will profit from more intuitive ways teaching and informing about climate change. We here present results of a user survey carried out in five countries (in native language) and of key stakeholder interviews within the same countries. In the surveys, we approached potential users within different countries to explore what climate data they need, in which complexity, spatio-temporal detail, actuality and visualisation style. We also aimed to explore if similar actors of different countries may have similar or different needs, and how we may prepare an optimal product useful for a large range of users located in different countries. Follow-up key stakeholder interviews helped us deepening the level of understanding of user needs. Such interviews allowed us to go into more details than the questionnaire. It also enabled us to present the users content of existing webpages presenting climate information, to identify what the users like, dislike or miss in existing tools - e.g., in terms of data visualisation, handling, comparison and comprehensiveness. Coordinating country partners served as multipliers to reach users in their national language and to evaluate the results. Those activities disseminated the ideas of our planned platform in those countries and between different users there.

The description and new features of a developed virtual computing and information environment for analysis, assessment and prediction of consequences of global climate changes for ecosystems and climate in the selected region are presented.

A forced by the coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19) approach to organization of multidisciplinary conference is described. A hybrid format combining both online and offline presentations is presented and advantages and disadvantages of the used approach are evaluated as well as the received feedback.

Environmental, socio-economic and climatic changes in Northern Eurasia convener:Pavel Groisman(NC State University Research Scholar at NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Asheville, North Carolina, USA), Erwan Monier(Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Shamil Maksyutov Tue. May 22, 2018 5:15 PM 6:30 PM Poster Hall (International Exhibition Hall7, Makuhari Messe) We invite presentations on the biogeochemical and hydrological cycles, climate and ecosystem interactions in Northern Eurasia (land-cover and land-use change, atmospheric aerosols, soil, and permafrost changes that affect and are being affected by human activity, climate and ecosystem change), human dimension, and tools to address the Northern Eurasia studies.

The effects of global climate change will be most dramatic in the vast Russian territory. According to the Hydrometeorological Center of Russia, there is an increase in the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather events, as well as in their damage to the ecosystems and infrastructure. To develop adaptation to climate change and mitigation of its consequences, it is necessary to promote and support activities aimed at reducing possible risks. However, there is insufficient awareness and lack of scientific background among decision-makers. Persons responsible for making decisions, stakeholders, and the general public do not often have skills and knowledge to work with climate data to elaborate an adaptation and sustainable development strategy. Some new sections of a web-system, “Climate”, are tailored to provide these groups with tools, skills, and thematic information for understanding climate processes occurring in their region. A course is developed where basic concepts are explained in detail for the general public. A climate characteristics database for decision-makers is created to obtain calculated fields of the indices describing spatial distributions of extreme values of meteorological characteristics for the territory of Siberia. For work with any of the indices, it is possible to download the database in various formats for use in various desktop GIS systems.

Abstarct This paper describes a geophysical observatory in use at the Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems SB RAS and the data it provides. These data can be used for the development of new parameterizations in an active layer model. This model will allow us to reproduce the physical processes in the soil and on its surface and make a detailed description of the exchanges between the surface and the atmosphere. This, in turn, could significantly increase the reliability of regional weather forecasts, especially of extreme weather events. The anticipated improvement in regional meteorological forecasting, as well as in a variety of characteristics measured at the geophysical observatory and the supporting information infrastructure open up possibilities for novel practical applications. In particular, we plan to use the ongoing measurements and data obtained for agrometeorological applications in Western Siberia.

Представлены описание и первые результаты разработки виртуальной вычислительно-информационной среды для анализа, оценки и прогноза последствий глобальных климатических изменений окружающей среды и климата в выбранном регионе. Созданная среда основана на информационных ресурсах трехслойной архитектуры. Intermediate results of the project aimed at improving methods of the detailed analysis, assessment and prediction of global climate change impact on the regional environment and climate are presented. New reliable interactive tools for in-depth statistical analysis and studying climate change impact obtained in this project will provide specialists, professionals, decision-makers and stakeholders with detailed climatic information. The project addresses the development of a topical virtual research environment (VRE) for the comprehensive study of ongoing and possible future climate change. It analyses the relevant subsequent effects. Such VRE will provide full topical informational required for studying regional economic, political and social consequences of the global climate change. The ultimate goal of this work is a design of hardware and software prototype supporting the topical virtual research environment for climate and environmental monitoring and analysis of the impact of climate change on socioeconomic processes on both local and regional scales. This VRE will integrate both already known and new archives of climate data sets with software realizations of traditional and advanced methods for statistical analysis of big spatial data sets. VRE prototype will provide scientists, decision-makers and stakeholders the access to processing resources and services for interactive analysis of geographically distributed spatial data through a web browser. It will present the results of the analysis using geoinformation technologies and ensure the systematization of spatial data and associated climate information. Also, the work describes an ontological approach to this systematization, which makes it possible to compare the semantics of meteorological and climatic parameters used in different collections and applied problems.

Virtual Research Environment aimed at solving applied problems requiring reanalyzes and climatic projections data is presented. The environment is based on the three-levels information system. Specially discussed is integration into the Virtual Research Environment under development of a decision support system employing an ontology knowledge base aimed at facilitation of related to climate change impact applied tasks solving.

The first version of a primitive OWL-ontology of collections climate and meteorological data of Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems SB RAS is presented. The ontology is a component of expert and decision support systems intended for quick search for climate and meteorological data required for solution of a certain class of applied problems.

The use of the OWL-ontology of climate information resources on the web-GIS of the Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences (IMCES SB RAS) for building an A-box of knowledge base used in an intelligent decision support system (IDSS) is considered in this work. A mathematical model is described, which is used for solution of the task of water freezing and ice melting on the Ob’ river. An example is given of the reduction problem solution with ontological description of the related input and output data of the task.

The activities on the creation of information-computational infrastructure to support the climatic research initiated by academician V.P. Dymnikov are described. In particular, the solutions to the problem of working with big climatic and meteorological datasets are analyzed. The structure and functionality are presetned of the thematic web-GIS “Climate” whose software-hardware prototype operates at the Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems of Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences. The system supports the interactive analysis of big climatic and meteorological datasets and the visualization of its results. The results of the analysis of aridity in South Siberia in the late 20th–early 21st centuries carried out using the web-GIS “Climate” prototype are presented.

A virtual research environment aimed at analysis of climate change and its impact on Northern Eurasia based on climatic data archives and dedicated analytics embedded into a web-GIS called “Climate” is presented. An extended set of analytical procedures related to the analysis of climatic and meteorological extremes is described. An updated web portal structure is described to facilitate the system use by the general public, regional stakeholders, and decision makers and get the required information without using a tedious registration procedure.

The architecture and basic elements of an information and computing software complex for processing and statistical analysis of spatial geophysical data archives are discussed. The basic elements of this complex are now represented by several software procedures for searching, selecting, and preprocessing of spatial data arrays, and some components of a geoportal and a graphical user interface. The modular structure of the computational backend of this software complex and the metadata database provide easy extension of complex's functionality. This ability has been used for the integration of some advanced procedures for mathematical and statistical analysis, processing and graphical representation of the results in the form of graphs, diagrams, and fields on a map of the territory of interest in this software complex.