With the Caspian Sea's north-south alignment, stretching over a distance of approximately 10 degrees, the water body crosses several different climatic regions. The northernmost regions, with Russia and Kazakhstan are characterised by dry and cold temperate continental cliamte. The south part of the sea, with Iran, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan is mountaineous and much warmer. The most precipitation is in the eastern parts, primarily in the southea...

As the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases, the temperature in the European part of the Caspian Sea region will continue to rise, at least at first. Some researchers have recently expressed fears that the warm Gulf Stream current in the Atlantic Ocean may slow down due to the changes in the Artic environment and oceanic circulation.

The amount of aerosols in the air has direct effect on the amount of solar radiation hitting the Earth's surface. Aerosols may have significant local or regional impact on temperature. Water vapour is a greenhouse gas, but at the same time the upper white surface of clouds reflects solar radiation back into space. Albedo - reflections of solar radiation from surfaces on the Earth - creates difficulties in exact calculations. If e.g. the polar ice...

Over the 20th century there has been a consistent, large-scale warming of both the land and ocean surface, with largest increases in temperature over the midand high latitudes of northern continents. This graphic shows the temperature changes across the planet from the years 1976 to 2000, as long-term deviations from the expected mean. The higher temperature increases over land surface - compared to ocean surface - is consistent with the observed...

Over the last 400,000 years the Earth's climate has been unstable, with very significant temperature changes, going from a warm climate to an ice age in as rapidly as a few decades. These rapid changes suggest that climate may be quite sensitive to internal or external climate forcings and feedbacks. This figures have been derived from the Vostok ice core, taken in Antarctica.

The graph shows the average global temperature from 1880 to 2100. It shows that the average global temperature has slowly increased since 1880 and is estimated to increase noticably over the course of the next hundred years.

Developing countries, whose economies often rely heavily on one or two agricultural products, are especially vulnerable to climate change. This graphic shows that with an increase of only 2 degrees Celsius, there would be a dramatic decrease in the amount of land suitable for growing Robusta coffee in Uganda.

An important factor when looking at the region in terms of environment and security is the impact of climate change in Central Asia in general, and Ferghana Valley in particular. By modifying people’s livelihood, climate change may have an important security dimension in conjunction with other aggravating factors. In the Ferghana valley it is likely that climate change will primarily affect sector related to water and agriculture. Central Asia is...

Climate change affect the health of the population, not only through heat waves and waterborne diseases, but also as a result of the expansion of geographical areas conducive to the transmission of vector-borne diseases such as yellow fever, dengue and malaria. Species of mosquitoes, such as the group ‘Anopheles gambiae’, ‘A. funestus’, ‘A. darlingi’, ‘Culex quinquefasciatus’ and ‘Aedes aegypti’, are responsible for propagation of the majority of...

The averages of the scenarios in the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) are presented in this figure, for the year 2090. The Arctic is a place where the effects of climate change are already very visible, and scenarios suggests that this will be one of the regions were the effects will be at its strongest.

Projected Arctic annual land temperature increases for the first half of the 21st century relative to the average temperature for 1980–99. The average of the IPCC models (the blue line) shows an increase of 3ºC by 2050. The averages of the runs from each of the 12 models show increases from 2–4ºC, the range of uncertainty in these model projections.

Evidence from tree rings and other temperature proxies suggests that during the previous 500 years global temperatures were 1.0ºC cooler than those of the 20th century during a period roughly from 1300 to 1870 – known as the Little Ice Age. While overall temperatures during the Little Ice Age were cooler than now, there was much year-to-year variability and some warm periods. The coldest part of the Little Ice Age, from 1645 to 1715, was also a t...

Examination of regional trends in spring snow-cover duration from 1969–2003 using NOAA snow-cover data shows the western United States to be among the regions with the strongest decreases. This supports results from studies based on measurements on the ground. Springtime snow cover shows a decline particularly in the Pacific Northwest region of the western United States, where snow water equivalent, a common snow cover measurement equivalent to t...

A history of Arctic land temperature anomalies from 1880 through 2006 is shown in this figure. The zero line represents the average temperature for 1961–1990. In the late 1800s the Arctic was relatively cold, although there is some uncertainty around these early temperature estimates. The Arctic warmed by about 0.7ºC over the 20th century. There was a warm period in the 1920s to 1940s and cold periods in the early 1900s and in the 1960s. Over th...

Glaciers and ice caps form around the world where snow deposited during the cold/humid season does not entirely melt during warm/dry times. This seasonal snow gradually becomes denser and transforms into perennial firn (rounded, well-bonded snow that is older than one year) and finally, after the air passages connecting the grains are closed off, into ice. The ice from such accumulation areas then flows under the influence of its own weight and t...

Glaciers and ice caps reached their Holocene (the past 10 000 years) maximum extent in most mountain ranges throughout the world towards the end of the Little Ice Age, between the 17th and mid-19th century. Over the past hundred years a trend of dramatic shrinking is apparent over the entire globe, especially at lower elevations and latitudes. Within this general trend, strong glacier retreat is observed in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by static...

The changes in cold-season mean temperatures over Arctic land regions are broken into three latitudinal bands for each region, as shown on the small map (which has an outer rim of 50° N). Error bars represent standard deviation from the mean. Where greater warming is projected at higher latitudes than at lower latitudes, temperature gradients will be reduced along large north-flowing rivers and this will likely reduce break-up severity. The rever...

Natural climate variability is organized into spatial patterns of high and low pressure regions, represented by the Arctic Oscillation (also called the Northern Annular Mode) and North Pacific patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, and the Southern Annular Mode in the Southern Hemisphere. The patterns of surface temperature anomalies when the Arctic Oscillation and Northern Pacific patterns are in their positive extreme are shown in this fi...

Observed Arctic winter land temperatures and IPCC model recreations for the 20th century. Note that although these model runs are able to capture the range of Arctic warm and cold periods, the timing of the peaks varies, suggesting that the early 20th century warming was due to random causes, while the increases at the end of the century shown by all the models supports CO2 as an external forcing of the Arctic climate system.

Warming is widespread, generally greater over land than over oceans, and the largest gains in temperatures for the planet are over the North American Arctic, north central Siberia, and on the Antarctic Peninsula. These recent increases in temperature are confirmed by changes in other features: loss of sea ice, shift of tundra to shrub vegetation, and migration of marine and terrestrial ecosystems to higher latitudes.