География

The article presents the study results of the annual variability of thunderstorm activity at nine climatic stations in Western Siberia over a fifty-year period from 1971 to 2020. The study revealed a complex quasi-periodic structure of thunderstorm activity series with the most pronounced amplitude of 7–8-year cycles for the forest-tundra and a 2–4-year cycle for the taiga zone, as well as forest-steppes.

The analysis of changes in the near-surface air temperature of the Northern Hemisphere is given. To identify years in which there was a violation of the series homogeneity, the stepwise trend method was applied using Kolmogorov statistics. It is shown that the identified homogeneous climatic intervals basically correspond to the natural climatic periods of the state of the Earth’s climate system.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the ways of using and accessing the Internet. In the course of the study, a sociological survey of respondents living in the city of Saratov was conducted, the results of which were compared with the average Russian statistical data.

Quantitative assessment of the territory continentality is an urgent task, because in the conditions of climate change, the index of continentality can be taken into account when developing geographical forecasts of landscape development. The purpose of this study is to assess the change in the index of continentality of Western Siberia in the conditions of the current trend in climate development. The statistical series of observations on seven meteorological stations in Western Siberia served as the information base of the study.