An analysis of climate continentality index for Russia's NorthEast

Abstract

Analysis of climate continentality is a powerful tool for studying and forecasting weath­er. Considering the continentality index enables determining current climate characteristics and predicting potential changes. This study aims to assess climate change in Russia’s North-East by analysing the continentality index as a complex integral indicator of these changes applicable to vast territories.

Although there are many methods for assessing climate continentality, there is no uni­versal methodology. It is proposed in this contribution to employ two of the existing tech­niques. The first focuses on the area’s annual temperature amplitude and geographic latitude. The second involves a calculation of the index based on average January and July tempera­tures, the sum of seasonal precipitation and the area’s latitude. An analysis of the index val­ues of the base and calculation periods leads one to conclude that these values do not change significantly towards either weaker or stronger continentality across the study area.