August 24, 2018
Global warming may facilitate mining of more oil from the from the subsurface resources of Russian Arctic regions. Oil and gas, forestry and agricultural sectors of local economies will benefit from climate change, while heating costs will seriously drop. Scholars at the A.I. Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory named (Saint Petersburg) analyzed impact of global warming to the economy of the Russian Arctic region. They found out that in a number of cases, it would cause positive changes though additional data will be required for more accurate determination of its extent and depth. A respective article was published in Russian Meteorology and Hydrology.
The researchers used the data from a number of mathematic models that simulate changes of key climatic parameters in the Arctic region. According to their estimates, impacts of global warming impact to the Russian parts of the Artic will not be uniform. Although the temperatures will rise almost everywhere, the Asian part will get notably warmer. The same should occur with precipitation. There will be more precipitation the Russian part of the Eastern Arctic than in the European part of the country.
The authors of the article tried to assess the impact of these processes to the main sectors of the economy in the Arctic region. According to their assessment, in the 21 century, it will get much easier to work for the mining industry (including oil and gas sector) in the Arctic region. Reduction of the number of days per annum with temperatures below 30 degrees Centigrade potentially reduces the downtime of drilling equipment. The number of days per annum, when it will be possible to conduct drilling and lay piping will also rise considerably.
The fact of rise in the amount of precipitation will be one of the disadvantages that the warming will bring. It is of general knowledge that the higher the temperatures are in the planet, the more precipitation occurs in it. It is especially true for the middle and high latitudes as the scholars note. According to their estimates, the amount of winter precipitation types will rise: by the end of this century, by 40 per cent for the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomy and by 70 per cent for the northern areas of Yakutia and Chukotka. Precipitation in winter means more snow, which would cause difficulties in transport operations in this part of the year.
Melting of permafrost may cause negative impact to oil transportation infrastructure. Of course, the authors of the paper did not write anything about the impact of global warming to simplification of oil and gas export from the region – owing to melting of ice in the Arctic Ocean the oil tankers and LNG carriers can move faster in the Arctic.
In addition, warming will reduce the duration of the heating season. For the Arctic zone of European part of Russia, the duration of heating season will be reduced by 40-50 days per annum to the middle of 21 century and by 60-70 days by the end of it. This may mean 30 per cent drop of total costs in a heating season. This is especially important in the Arctic region conditions for in a number of regions in the Northern areas of Russ, the energy systems and autonomous and their functioning is subject to extremely expensive delivery of goods and fuel to the Northern territories. Cut in the need for delivery of fuel may ease this issue. Global warming will have a positive impact to forestry and agricultural sectors (save the reign deer breeding, which may face problems due to increase of snowfall in winter).
Rise of summer temperatures may lead to increase of population morbidity. However, the paper gives no numerical estimates for this tendency. Moreover, the authours give no comments to the fact that has been shown by the foreign scientific researches – mortality rate growth due to rise of summer temperatures may be surpassed with serious exceedance by rise of winter temperatures that leads to reduction in mortality.
Although the researchers show more positive, than negative, consequences of their own climate models, they avoid decisive conclusions and note that for obtaining more comprehensive understanding of the issue, it is necessary to focus on improvement of climate modelling of the future of the Arctic Region of Russia.
Translated into English by Muhiddin Ganiev
https://link.springer.com/article/10.3103/S1068373918060018
https://chrdk.ru/news/poteplenie-pomozhet-vykachat-bolshe-nefti-iz-rossiiskoi-arktiki