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 polluted regions. Projected growth of emissions of radiatively active gases and particles in the models suggest that they may significantly influence the climate, even out to year 2100.

Stabilization emissions scenarios assume future emissions based on an internally consistent set of assumptions about driving forces (such as population, socioeconomic development, and technological change) and their key relationships. These emissions are constrained so that the resulting atmospheric concentrations of the substance level off at a predetermined value in the future. For example, if one assumes the global CO2 concentrations are stabilized at 450 parts per million (ppm) (the current value is about 380 ppm), the climate models can be tuned to produce this result. The tuned model predictions for regional climate changes can be used to assess specific impacts at this stabilization level. A more detailed discussion of the ability of the models to project regional climate changes can be found in Annex A.

Climate Projections of Future Temperature and Precipitation

The IPCC AR4 does not include predictions specifically focused on Russia. Most of the country is included within a modeling region referred to as Northern Asia (NAS). Warming in this region is expected to be well above the global mean—consistent with the more general result that high latitudes will (and are) warming more than low latitudes (see Figure 2). This warming is particularly great in autumn and early winter when sea ice is thinnest and the snow depth is insufficient to blur the relationship between surface air temperature and sea ice thickness. Precipitation is also very likely to increase (Annex A).xiv

Figure 2. IPCC projected temperature increases for Northern Asia (NAS) (including Russia). Temperature anomalies with respect to 1901-1950 for the NAS land region for 1906-2005 (black line) and as simulated (red envelope) by multi-model datasets incorporating known forcings; and as projected for 2001-2100 for the A1B scenario (orange envelope). The bars at right represent the range of projected changes for 2091-2100 for the B1 (blue), the A1B (orange) and the A2 (red) scenarios. Source: Climate Change Risk Management Ltd, “Climate Change in Russia: research and impacts” (May 2008), hyperlink (accessed February 17, 2009): http://www.uk-russia-ccproject.info/documents/Impacts_in_Russia_Report_2008.pdf

The Arctic is extremely vulnerable to climate change.xv The region is warming much more rapidly than the global average. The IPCC report states that the winter warming of northern high latitude regions by the end of the century will be at least 40 percent greater than the global mean, based on a number of models and emissions scenarios. Temperature increases for the central Arctic are