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

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.Peer reviewe

Manifestations of the Tsunami on November 15, 2006, on the Central Kuril Islands and Results of the Runup Heights Modeling

During the period from July 1 to August 14, 2007, two marine multidisciplinary expeditions were carried out in the region of the Central Kuril Islands. One of the goals of the expeditions was investigation of the coasts of the Central Kuril Islands to measure the run-up heights and inundation distances of tsunami, as well as to gather data on the geological effects of the tsunami on the coasts

Record heavy mineral dust outbreaks over Korea in 2010 : Two cases observed with multiwavelength aerosol/depolarization/Raman-quartz lidar

We report on two strong events of transport of mineral dust from Central Asia across Korea. The events took place in March and November 2010. The November case is important as fall is not a typical time for strong dust outbreaks in East Asia. We observed the dust with a multiwavelength aerosol/depolarization/Raman quartz lidar. The record PM-10 concentration of nearly 1600 mu g/m(3) in March 2010 exceeds the record value of 1470 mu g/m(3) measured in Seoul in March 2002. The event in November was the strongest case of dust transport ever observed over Korea in fall. We find up to 360 mu g/m(3) dust in heights above 250 m which is significantly different from the ground-based PM-10 observationsPeer reviewe