Siberia faces meltdown

The Climate and Land Surface Systems Interaction Centre at the University of Leicester hosted an international scientific Symposium on “Environmental change in Siberia – Insights from Earth Observation and modelling” from 18-20 September 2006. Around 30 participating scientists from the UK, Russia, Austria, France, Italy and Germany presented new findings on the rapidly occurring environmental changes in the vast Siberian forest tracts. The Symposium brought together leading scientists from different disciplines who have been developing new information systems based on satellites, field data and climate models.

According to the latest meteorological data, Siberia seems to warm up even faster than previously predicted by the Hadley Centre climate model. The warming trend affects mainly the winter months and leads to an earlier snow melt. The resulting earlier onset of spring can be detected from a range of satellites, and is believed to be advancing by as much as 0.5 to 1 day per year since satellite observations began in 1982.
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