Mapping the characteristics of climate change in Stavropol Region

Abstract

Currently, there is dynamic global climate change, as evidenced by the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). For many agricultural regions, including the South of Russia, such changes increase the already high natural and climatic risks. The Stavropol Territory, like most other regions of Russia, has insufficient coverage of the territory with a network of meteorological stations, in connection with which it becomes necessary to use modern GIS technologies for analyzing spatial data. In this work, the interpolation method «Natural Neighbor» was used to analyze climate data. The use of geoinformation technologies made it possible to identify regional features of climate change throughout the Stavropol Territory over the past 60 years (1961-2020). In the region, there has been an increase in the average annual air temperature over the past 30 years by 0.9 ℃, while maintaining the current growth rate by 2050, the average annual temperature may increase by another 0.6 ℃. The intraannual heterogeneity of the temperature increase was revealed, so in January, February, March and August it ranges from +1.8 to +2.0 ℃, in October to +1.6 ℃, and for the rest of the months the increase does not exceed 1 ℃, and only in November, the temperature drops to -0.6 ℃. One of the main limiting factors of the efficiency of crop production is the moisture supply of the territory. Analysis of the deviations of the annual precipitation amount in the Stavropol Territory does not allow us to reveal a reliable trend in their change, since there are significant fluctuations over the years, which can lead to the occurrence of unfavorable arid phenomena. It was found that for the period 1961-2020. droughts of various durations occur annually. At the same time, there is a likelihood of extremely unfavorable 5-month droughts, which can provoke a whole range of adverse events, such as dry winds and dust storms. On the basis of geoinformation technologies, a series of maps was created that describes the climatic conditions of the period 1991-2020, which is a new climatic norm for the territory of the Stavropol Territory.