Research agenda for the Russian Far East and utilization of multi-platform comprehensive environmental observations

• Published in: International Journal of Digital Earth
• Main Authors: Tuukka Petäjä, Kirill S. Ganzei, Hanna K. Lappalainen, Ksenia Tabakova, Risto Makkonen, Jouni Räisänen, Sergey Chalov, Markku Kulmala, Sergej Zilitinkevich, Petr Ya Baklanov, Renat B. Shakirov, Natalia V. Mishina, Evgeny G. Egidarev, Igor I. Kondrat’ev
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2021
• Subjects: russian far east; greenhouse gases; aerosol particles; in-situ observations; earth observation data; Mathematical geography. Cartography; GA1-1776; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Climate change
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1080/17538947.2020.1826589; https://doaj.org/article/12856b75cd5e4cf3aa96270e483f85d2

The Russian Far East is a region between China and the Russian Arctic with a diverse climatological, geophysical, oceanic, and economical characteristic. The southern region is located in the Far East monsoon sector, while the northern parts are affected by the Arctic Ocean and cold air masses penetrating far to the south. Growing economic activities and traffic connected to the China Belt and Road Initiative together with climate change are placing an increased pressure upon the Russian Far East environment. There is an urgent need to improve the capacity to measure the atmospheric and environmental pollution and analyze their sources and to quantify the relative roles of local and transported pollution emissions in the region. In the paper, we characterize the current environmental and socio-economical landscape of the Russian Far East and summarize the future climate scenarios and identify the key regional research questions. We discuss the research infrastructure concept, which is needed to answer the identified research questions. The integrated observations, filling in the critical observational gap at the Northern Eurasian context, are required to provide state-of-the-art observations and enable follow-up procedures that support local, regional, and global decision making in the environmental context.