After a short period of frosts, sustainable warming again has become settled in Tashkent as well as in all provinces of Uzbekistan. Meteorologists mark that the winter of this year is anomaly warm and rather dry in Uzbekistan as well as all over Central Asia. Weather wisdom tells us that all missing atmospheric precipitations rate that should fall in winter will be replenished by spring rainfalls. But this weather wisdom formed in the time when weather indicators were relatively stable not only in Uzbekistan but all over the world. The climate change is now much spoken about. May be the statistics of weather anomalies for winter of 2010 will increase the number of people considering that it is something wrong with the climate. This winter in Greece also was anomaly warm. The beginning of January became the warmest for one hundred years of monitoring. The highest temperature those days was in the Heraklion city on the Crete: up to+29.8°C. Warm weather lasted in Greece during all December and caused mass flowering of plants which usually flower in spring. At the same time other Balkan country (Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia) suffered from floods caused by heavy rains and snow-falls. Drop of temperature to -50°C lead to death of 1.7 million heads of cattle and exposed to danger of hunger 21000 families of cattle-breeders in Mongolia. International assistance at the rate of US $6 million is necessary to help cattle-breeders to live till spring. The capital of China also appeared in captivity of snow. In some districts of Beijing about 33cm. of snow fell within 24 hours. It is the record since 1951. Because of the snow-fall the Beijing International Airport had to cancel 750 flights i.e. 90% of planed departures. On the same day record blanket of snow with thickness of 29cm. covered the capital of South Korea- Seoul. In the north of India it became colder to -15°C - it is about 7 degrees below regular level. The school classes were concealed in some regions of the country. More than 120 people (mainly homeless) died because of intense cold. Europe was also covered by snow and suffered from unusual frosts. In Germany heavy snow-falls broke the aerial-communication and caused a lot of crashes. Many airports canceled flights. At the night of 27 January the 15-years record of negative temperature was broken in Gars am Kamp in Austria. There temperature at night dropped to -27.6°C. Record-low temperature -31°C was fixed in Polish city of Bialystok. Usually January temperature in Poland does not drop below -10°C. At the north of Holland weather forecasters marked the record-low temperature for this region: -14°C. At the beginning of January whole territory of the Great Britain became covered with snow for the first time during 30 years. In some districts of UK temperature went down to -20°C at night. Roads, electricity transmission lines, take-off runways iced over. School classes, football matches and almost all public events were canceled. In Russia frosts also were very strong although this country got used to them. In Turkey snow-falls cut off 1.5 thousand of villages in the eastern part of the country. There temperature dropped to the record mark for last 50 years: -30°C. Even in the state of Florida the longest frost since 1989 were fixed. Not only agricultural lands but also specimens of fauna of this tropical state suffered from cold. Heat-loving Iguanas frozen on branches of trees and were falling down to the ground. Zoologists reported about death of crocodiles and pythons. Sea turtles dead near the cost of Gulf of Mexico. The climate change may have not only gradual character, but catastrophic shift also is possible. It is the main conclusion of the presentation ‘Weather Forecast: 2010-2020’ prepared by professional futurologists –Peter Shvarts and Douglas Randall at the order of the USA Ministry of Defence. The authors of this presentation consider that as the result of climate change Europe, Asia and North America will lose usual warm, and in southern hemisphere it will on the contrary become hotter. Something like this already happened on the Earth 8200 years ago. And in 1300-1850 the Small Glaciation took place then because of the great cooling Europeans had to leave Greenland: the Viking’s civilization declined. It is highlighted in the presentation that in 1315-1319 years tens of thousands of people dead by hunger although that time humanity was not numerous. In spite of all scientific and technical achievements, a human being in our time also is vulnerable to the power of nature.

The review is prepared by N. Shivaldova