Summer season drought in Eastern Europe and Western Russia

During the summer of 2010, a severe drought impacted Western Russia, and this was accompanied by high temperatures. Moscow recorded 100o F for the first time in over 130 years of record keeping. The combination of heat, dry weather, and smoke from forest fires caused increased mortality rates during July and August, 2010. The excessive heat and humidity was the result of strong atmospheric blocking from late June through early August. The NCAR-NCEP re-analyses were then used to examine blocking in the Eastern European and western Russia sector during the spring and summer seasons from 1970 - 2010. The characteristics of blocking such as intensity, duration, and size will be examined. The addition of block size is a new addition to the blocking archive available through the Univeristy of Missouri (http://weather.missouri.edu). It was found that the drier years were correlated with more blocking during the spring and summer seasons and these years correlated with transitions from El Niño to La Niña years. Blocking during these years were also stronger, but not necessarily of longer durations. Also, stornger blocking events tend to be larger, and continental region blocking events were also of larger extent.