Climate change will make Siberia more habitable

Siberia. The very word evokes an endless vista of forbidding, sparsely populated landscapes where the frigid climate takes a toll on locals. That could soon change.

An international team of scientists, from the Krasnoyarsk Federal Research Center in Russia and the National Institute of Aerospace in the U.S., predicts in a new study that much of the 13 million square kilometers of landmass that stretches from east of the Urals to the Pacific could be habitable by the end of the century as a result of climate change.

Siberia accounts for 77% of Russia’s overall land area but only 27% of the country’s population lives there. To map out possible climate scenarios for the vast Asian part of Russia in the face of ongoing climate change, the scientists employed a combination of 20 general circulation models. They also drew on two atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration trajectories known as Representative Concentration Pathway scenarios: one involving mild climate change and another involving more extreme climatic changes in coming decades.

The population of Siberia “is concentrated along the forest-steppe in the south, with its comfortable climate and thriving agriculture on fertile soils,” they explain. “We use current and predicted climate scenarios to evaluate the climate comfort of various landscapes to determine the potential for human settlers throughout the 21st century.”

The scientists wanted to see how habited areas, as well as those that remain inhospitable to people for much of the year, will fare under various climate-modelling scenarios. They have found that as a result of persistently warmer weather the zone of permafrost will continue to shrink and shift to the northeast, allowing people to migrate far and wide and cultivate land on what is still permanently frozen ground.

“Our simulations showed that under RCP8.5 [the more extreme scenario], by the 2080s Asian Russia would have a milder climate, with less permafrost coverage, decreasing from the contemporary 65 per cent to 40 per cent of the area by the 2080s,” says Dr. Elena Parfenova, the study’s lead author from the Krasnoyarsk Federal Research Center.

“Asian Russia is currently extremely cold. In a future warmer climate, food security in terms of crop distribution and production capability is likely to become more favourable for people to support settlements,” she explains.

“However, suitable land development depends on the authorities’ social, political and economic policies. Lands with developed infrastructure and high agricultural potential would obviously be populated first,” she adds. “Vast tracts of Siberia and the Far East have poorly developed infrastructure. The speed these developments happen depends on investments in infrastructure and agriculture, which in turn depends on the decisions that should be made soon.”