Problems and opportunities for biometeorological assessment of conditions cold season

Abstract

The article is devoted to a discussion of the possibilities of biometeorological assessment of the severity of weather conditions during the cold season. The relevance of the study is ensured not only by the fact that residents of a number of states, whose total number is more than 27 million people, live in these extreme climatic conditions, but also by the need to improve biometeorological approaches to assessing the impact of these conditions on the body and health of the population. This study examined biometeorological characteristics that illustrate a measure of cold stress. These include the Siple wind-chill index; Bodman winter severity index; Arnoldi weather hardness coefficient; Mountain wind chill index; weather hardness coefficient according to I.M. Osokin. The results of a comparison of winter severity assessments based on the values of the calculated Siple and Bodman indices made it possible to establish that the Bodman index is more acceptable when assessing mildly severe winters. The most adequate for assessing the “severity”of the cold period against the background of a decrease in air temperature and an increase in wind speed is the Siple index. The need to provide the countries of the world with high-quality hydrometeorological and biometeorological forecast information is justified and relevant. In this regard, these studies are very promising.