Research agenda for the Russian Far East and utilization of multi-platform comprehensive environmental observations

Abstract

The Russian Far East is a region between China and the Russian Arctic with a diverse climatological, geophysical, oceanic, and economical characteristic. The southern region is located in the Far East monsoon sector, while the northern parts are affected by the Arctic Ocean and cold air masses penetrating far to the south. Growing economic activities and traffic connected to the China Belt and Road Initiative together with climate change are placing an increased pressure upon the Russian Far East environment. There is an urgent need to improve the capacity to measure the atmospheric and environmental pollution and analyze their sources and to quantify the relative roles of local and transported pollution emissions in the region. In the paper, we characterize the current environmental and socio-economical landscape of the Russian Far East and summarize the future climate scenarios and identify the key regional research questions. We discuss the research infrastructure concept, which is needed to answer the identified research questions. The integrated observations, filling in the critical observational gap at the Northern Eurasian context, are required to provide state-of-the-art observations and enable follow-up procedures that support local, regional, and global decision making in the environmental context.

Equal abundance of summertime natural and wintertime anthropogenic Arctic organic aerosols

“…Our results provide the first understanding of the present-day year-long, pan-Arctic OA sources, which can be used for comparisons with past (for example, through ice-core archives 83 ) and future measurements of these changing biogenic and anthropogenic emissions. Given practical difficulties in deploying multiple online AMS instruments for long time periods around the Arctic and the widespread availability of ambient filters, the measurement methodology and analysis techniques employed here are also applicable to emerging Arctic stations (for example, in far East Siberia 84 ).…”

Fire and vegetation dynamics in northwest Siberia during the last 60 years based on high-resolution remote sensing

“…On the positive side, an increase in forest areas provides a means for the enhancement of the carbon sink and accordingly also of CarbonSink+ (Kalliokoski et al, 2019). Overall, the importance of and need for detailed comprehensive long-term data is also obvious; therefore it is important to complete and verify satellite remote sensing data by observations -to establish Station for Measuring Ecosystem -Atmosphere Relations (SMEAR) (Kulmala, 2018) in northwest Siberia as a part of Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX) activities (Kulmala et al, 2015;Lappalainen et al, 2016;Petäjä et al, 2020).…”

“…Weather conditions in northern Siberia can support largescale wildfires during summertime. The fires occur mainly in July (Ponomarev et al, 2016). Burned areas after five major fire events (Table 4) are shown in Fig.…”

Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR): Showcases for making science diplomacy

“…The PEEX Science Plan focuses on these issues and introduces research questions in the context of GHG emissions, critical atmospheric processes, ecosystem structural changes, the Arctic Ocean in the climate system, human actions on land-use changes and urbanisation. The fundamental part of the plan is to fill in the observational gap in the Northern Eurasian region and establish a land-atmosphere in situ station network in Russia and China as part of the global observation systems (Alekseychik et al, 2016;Vihma et al, 2019;Petäjä et al, 2021). The implementation of such a station infrastructure together with research and education activities in Russia and China would require high-level political support and national investments.…”