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ABSTRACT
In the modern period in the Sea of Azov region air temperature is increasing, especially during the winter, some warming of waters of the Sea of Azov and mitigation of its ice conditions are observed. Along with that, decrease of wind speed and a slight contrast increase of the climate region (continentality) are observed. In recent years, beginning of the next period of the Sea of Azov salinity increasing is marked, which is probably connected with reduction of annual precipitation in the region.
A brief historical review of the hydrological regime studying of the Sea of Azov and existing approaches to annual salinity evaluation are presented. Database including 40947 oceanographic stations with salinity measurements for the period of 1913-2014 was used to calculate the average annual sea salinity. Differences in obtained values of average salinity from those previously published were revealed due to differences in methodological approaches and amount of observation data. The most significant differences are observed for the Taganrog Bay, which is associated with high variability of its hydrological regime. Anomalies of average annual salinity for the period of 1922-2014 are presented.
Keywords: Sea of Azov, climatic changes, salinity
INTRODUCTION
Weather and climate are fundamental to doing any kind of economic activity. In the last two decades attention of researchers has increased in connection with the observed climate changes.
Since 2004, in the Southern Scientific Center of Russian Academy of Sciences (SSC RAS) with the support of the World Data Center of NOAA (NODC NOAA) a database of observations (hereinafter - DB) of hydro-meteorological mode of the Sea of Azov is being formed. In 2006, the first version of the database edition was prepared for publishing, which contained 14,145 stations [1]. In the Climatic Atlas of the Sea of Azov issued in 2008 the database already contained information on 35,417 marine and 89,203 coastal observation stations [2]. In preparation for publication of the Climate Atlas of Nine Large Marine Ecosystems of the Northern Hemisphere [3] the oceanographic database of the Sea of Azov has been expanded to 66,609 marine stations covering the observation period of 1891-2012. The work on the preservation and analysis of observation data continues.
Variability of the most significant meteorological conditions - air temperature, wind speed and precipitation...