🇷🇺Russia

Russia (approximately 17.1 million km²) extends from about 41°–82°N and 19°E–169°W as Earth's largest country spanning eleven time zones across Eurasia from the Baltic Sea and Black Sea in the west through the Ural Mountains continental divide to the Pacific Ocean in the east, bordered by fourteen countries including North Korea, Norway, and China.

The vast territory encompasses extraordinary topographic diversity: the East European Plain west of the Urals including Moscow and St. Petersburg, the West Siberian Plain (world's largest continuous lowland), the Central Siberian Plateau, the Russian Far East mountain ranges, the Caucasus Mountains featuring Elbrus at 5,642 m (Europe's highest peak and Russia's summit), the Altai, Sayan, and Verkhoyansk ranges, and Arctic archipelagos including Franz Josef Land and Severnaya Zemlya.

Mammoth river systems dominate hydrology: the Volga (Europe's longest at 3,530 km draining into the Caspian), the Ob-Irtysh (5,410 km), Yenisei (5,539 km), and Lena (4,400 km) flowing north into the Arctic Ocean, plus the Amur (4,444 km) reaching the Pacific.

The climate spectrum ranges from tundra ET across Arctic coasts and islands through subarctic Dfc/Dfd/Dwd covering most of Siberia and the Far East to humid continental Dfb around Moscow and the west, continental semi-arid BSk in southern steppes, and humid subtropical Cfa along the Black Sea coast at Sochi.

Moscow (central European Russia) has January highs of −4°C with lows near −9°C and July highs of about 25°C with 700 mm annual precipitation fairly evenly distributed. The July-August 2010 heatwave reached 38.2°C in Moscow (44.0°C in Kalmykia) and caused about 56,000 deaths through heat stress, smoke inhalation from peat and forest fires, and associated health impacts. St. Petersburg (northwestern Baltic coast) has January highs of −2°C with lows near −7°C and July highs of 23°C with 660 mm, its climate moderated by the sea.

Yekaterinburg (Urals divide) has January highs of −9°C with lows near −16°C and July highs of 24°C with 540 mm. Novosibirsk (West Siberian Plain) drops to January lows near −21°C (highs −13°C) and has July highs of 25°C with 430 mm. Krasnoyarsk (Central Siberia) plunges to January lows near −19°C (highs −12°C) and has July highs of 25°C with 470 mm. Yakutsk (coldest major city on Earth) reaches January lows near −40°C (highs −34°C) and July highs of 26°C with 235 mm annual precipitation, exemplifying extreme continental climate.

Vladivostok (Pacific coast) has January highs of −8°C with lows near −15°C and July highs of 22°C with 830 mm heavily summer-concentrated. Sochi (Black Sea subtropical zone) has January highs of 10°C with lows near 4°C and July highs of 28°C with 1,700 mm. Russia is warming 2.5 times faster than the global average.

Recent events include the June 2020 Verkhoyansk reading of 38.0°C (Arctic temperature record), the April 2024 Orenburg floods affecting some 10,000 homes, the 2019 Siberian wildfire season (13.1 million hectares burned by early August, per Greenpeace), the 2023 Yakutia wildfires consuming about 1.4 million hectares, and permafrost thaw affecting Arctic regions.

Our archive covers 214 Russian cities with daily ERA5 reanalysis data going back to 1940. The hottest July afternoons are in Astrakhan, with average highs around 31.5°C, while Yakutsk has the coldest January nights, with average lows near −41.7°C. Comparing the last decade against the 1940–1970 baseline, mean temperatures across these cities have risen by about 2.4°C.