Prosecutor General’s Office: Not enough weather stations for Arctic climate monitoring
© RIA Novosti. Ramil Sitdikov

Prosecutor General’s Office: Not enough weather stations for Arctic climate monitoring

The Prosecutor General's Office will give attention to the unwarranted weather station shutdowns in the Arctic, RIA Novosti reports, citing the press service of the Prosecutor General's Office.

The office claims that the Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring failed to carry out proper meteorological and ecological monitoring of the area, neglecting the climate changes in the Artic and the negative effects of these changes.

"The monitoring of climate events in the Artic is often being carried out in conditions when there are not enough weather stations and observation points. The prosecution authorities should focus their attention on illegal and unwarranted weather station shutdowns," the press service reports.

It was pointed out that there should be 208 functioning weather stations in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). But there are only 109 stations, with only a half of them in operation. "There also should be 227 hydrological observation points. In reality, only 170 of them are currently in operation. Moreover, there is a tendency towards further shutdowns in the same republic," the press service states.

These facts came to light during the course of inspections aimed at identifying environmental violations in the Arctic, which was initiated during a briefing in May 2016, the agency reports. The Prosecutor General's Office made submissions to the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources and the Federal Agency for Fishery and sent information to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring,

Prosecutors have found about 7,000 violations of nature protection laws in the Arctic zone over the past two years. This led to issuing more than 1,000 remedial action orders and 176 violation notices, and the filing of 590 law suits. The prosecutors brought administrative charges against 922 individuals and initiated 26 criminal cases.