It is worth waiting for lingering and severe colds in winter, strong summer storms and rainy but warm autumn.

The debate between practical meteorologists, climate scientists, and folk forecasters about whether it is possible to accurately predict the weather a year ahead has been going on for decades. Points of view are different. Yes, back in Soviet times one of the leaders of the Hydrometeorological Center of the USSR declared with aplomb: “The weather is chaos. And how can one predict chaos a year ahead? Since then, the opinion of meteorologists has changed, but not dramatically: Ukrhydrometeorological center can only speak about the most general weather trends for the coming year. They are based on statistical data that the Central Geophysical Observatory of Ukraine has been accumulating for 136 years. It follows from them that every decade our winters are getting warmer, and summers last longer. Enthusiasts-populists, who for many years have been studying ancient methods or developing their own forecasting methods, refuting, in their opinion, the theory of stable warming, have a different opinion. Finally, fundamental science speaks of long-term circulations (circular motions) of the polar air masses from high latitudes to low latitudes and vice versa. Because of these circulations, cold and warm periods alternate. Now we are heading into the cold years.

CHIEF FORECAST AND SCIENCE.“It can be said for sure that both in winter and in summer periods average temperatures are expected to be above normal as the overall warming trend continues. But this winter there will be severe frosts and thaws, and in summer, as usual, both heat and coolness with showers, the exact dates of which cannot be predicted, ”Nikolai Kulbida, head of the Ukrhydrometeorological center, shared with us the forecast for 2017. Professor Vazira Martazinova, Head of the Department of Climate Research and Long-Term Weather Forecasts of the Meteorological Research Institute of the National Academy of Sciences, also speaks about temperature “swings” throughout the year. “The winter will be unsettled. There will be only 20-25 frosty days, - Martazinova noted. - At the end of January 2017 it will be up to -10, on February 10-11 to -14, and this last days winters. Then spring begins."

POPULISTS. The most detailed forecasts of folk weather forecasters: they give weather calculations by day, predict rain and heat, and calculate the average daily temperature. For five years of publishing such forecasts - from the late Valery Nekrasov from the Dnieper, Vladimir Lis from Volyn, who, alas, is no longer engaged in weather calculations, and the current national weather forecaster Leonid Gorban - "Today" was convinced that the reliability of their predictions is very high. Gorban estimates the probability of his forecasts for the whole of Ukraine at 75%, which is close to the truth. “More precisely, it is hardly possible to give calculations for the whole country, because the regions are different: flat, mountainous, coastal and continental. And the weather is a little different everywhere. But for some areas, the accuracy of my calculations reaches 95%,” says Gorban. Last year he correctly predicted a late spring, a cool summer, early autumn almost without Indian summer, frost with snow already in November and December is colder than usual. "Today" publishes new forecast from Leonid Gorban for 2017 (see infographic). According to the 7-year cycle of the planets of the Bryusov calendar (“Today” wrote in detail about it on January 15, 2016), which Gorban uses in his calculations, the year of the Sun is coming. “Winter in the year of the Sun is cold and snowy, spring is cold at first, frosts last until March 20-25, April is cold and dry with strong winds, drought in May,” Gorban explained his forecast. - Summer is initially dry and hot, in July heavy rains August is cool. Autumn is warm with heavy rainfall, light frosts and snow from mid-November.

HARVEST: WITHOUT SPRING BUT WITH CORN

Leonid Gorban claims that the years of the Sun (1996, 2003, 2010, 2017 and beyond) are usually lean. “Worse than them are only the years of Mercury (1998, 2005, 2012, 2019…). “There are several reasons for the low harvest in 2017,” Gorban explains. - First, winter this year drags on to March and half of April, which means that the sowing dates for spring and row crops (corn, sunflower) are postponed. In May, heat sets in from the first days, while there is no rain for almost the entire May and the first half of June, which slows down the growth of plants. Will go in July good rains, but it's' too late. In addition, due to strong winds and storms in many regions there will be lodging of wheat, just as the harvest begins. August will be cool with moderate rains, but the precipitation will only benefit sunflowers and corn, which will begin to grow actively. It is impossible to delay their harvesting, because October is expected to be damp in the first half, and it will not be possible to harvest a good harvest. But in September the land will be damp, and the sowing of winter crops will be normal.”

To what extent Gorban's words are confirmed by statistics. As it turns out, there is a pattern. So, according to the State Statistics Service, in 1995 Ukrainian farmers harvested 33.9 million tons of grain, in 1996 (the year of the Sun) - only 24.5 million tons, in the next 1997 (the year of the Moon) again an increase to 35 .5 million tons, in 1998 (Mercury's lean year) - only 26.5 million tons! It was the same in the next 7-year period, which fell on the 2000s: 2003, which was ruled by the Sun, turned out to be twice as bad in grain harvest (20.2 million tons) compared to the previous and subsequent years. In 2010, the picture was better - the harvest amounted to 39.2 million tons, but less than a year earlier and a year later (46 and 56 million tons).

Agricultural market experts agree that the weather seriously affects crop volumes, but argue that in any case, Ukraine is not threatened with famine. "If weather spring and summer will be as predicted people's weather forecaster, they can really seriously reduce the grain harvest, - Yaroslav Levitsky, an analyst at the ProAgro consulting company, explained to us. - First of all, it concerns spring crops, which are sown in spring. But winter crops in conditions, albeit cold, but snowy winters will endure frosts well. We have much more winter crops than spring crops: about 5 million hectares of wheat and about 1 million hectares of barley against 0.1 million hectares and 2.5 million hectares, respectively. At the same time, the barley grown in our country is mainly fodder barley, only a small part of it is of food and brewing quality.” According to Levitsky, the annual grain consumption in Ukraine is about 25 million tons, of which for food needs - up to 6 million tons, so even with a low yield of 14-15 centners per hectare (which is half as much as last year), the harvested grain will be enough from extravagant. But grain prices may rise. So, a ton of wheat in the lean year of 2012 on the domestic market cost $280-300/t in dollar terms, and in the last three harvest seasons, its price fluctuates between $150-170/t.

WEATHER RECORDS IN UKRAINE

With the help of specialists from the Department of Climatology of the Central Geophysical Observatory of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Ukraine, Segodnya found out in which places and in what year the climatic records of Ukraine were recorded, and compared them with the world ones.

The maximum heat was recorded on July 20, 2007 in Voznesensk, Mykolaiv region - +41.3 °C. But this is nothing compared to the heat in Libya - here in the city of El Aziziya it reached +57.8 ° C in September 1922.

But the strongest frost at -41.9 ° C in Ukraine happened on February 8, 1935 in Lugansk. World record - 89.2 degrees of frost at the Vostok station in Antarctica in 1983.

Most of the snow - 3.5 m - fell on March 25, 2006 in the Carpathians, but they fell short of snowdrifts of 4.8 m on Mount Shasta in California (February 1959).

Most strong wind in our country it blew on December 24, 1947 at Ai-Petri - 180 km / h versus 407 km / h on the Barrow Islands in Australia in 1996.

FORECAST-SUN

Leonid Gorban jokingly says that his domestic cat helps him prepare weather forecasts: a handsome Persian with an unusual nickname Sun. “When I work, Sunny sits on the table and carefully observes,” Gorban said. - Once I did the calculations, left them on the table and went out. When I returned, I was horrified to find that the Sun, excuse me, described them. I started to redo it - and found a gross mistake in the numbers! If not for the cat, the whole prediction would be wrong. The cat was still marking the sheets - and every time after that an error was discovered! Some kind of mystic." But Nikolai Kulbida, who also has cats in his dacha, answered us that he does not consult with animals when preparing forecasts.

"Checks" the calculations.

In the coming year, we are promised a frosty end of winter and a "tropical" summer - hot and with rain. Such long term forecast weather from the famous folk weather forecaster Leonid Gorban, writes "Today".

In his forecasts, Gorban is guided by the ancient method of the so-called "Bryusov calendar", in which weather calculations are carried out according to the numerical series of planets and folk omens. (“Today” wrote about this in detail on January 15, 2016 - Auth.). The annual weather is ruled in turn by the Sun, the Moon and five planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. The past year was the year of the Sun, the coming year was the year of Venus, the next one will pass under the sign of Mercury.

As Gorban admits, the accuracy of the average forecast for the whole of Ukraine is approximately 75%, but for individual regions the probability of its calculations reaches 95%. In the past year, the people's weather forecaster, in particular, correctly predicted February cold, belated but hot summer, early rainy autumn.

“The year of Venus is more wet than dry,” says Gorban. - Spring is expected to be cool and damp: cold March, and April and March will not be hot and dry either. Summer is humid and moderately warm. The years of Venus are fruitful for spike crops, but the danger is that during their harvesting there are heavy rains that are protracted, which leads to crop loss. Autumn is warm at first, then cold, frosts are possible already at the end of October. Winter is moderate, dry at first, then cold, very snowy, which will lead to a large flood of rivers.

Ukrhydrometeorological center and climate scientists, unlike Narodnik, argue that it is difficult to make even an approximate weather forecast, since it is influenced by many uncalculated factors, for example, solar activity, volcanic eruptions, and the behavior of the World Ocean. But they all admit that over the past 5-6 years, the weather, both in Ukraine and in the world, has become more unstable.

“2018 is expected to be an average year, possibly rainier than usual. As in the previous 2-3 years, due to global warming, frequent temperature changes are possible, especially in summer - hot weather cool for a while, then heat again, thunderstorms again., - Anatoly Prokopenko, deputy head of the Ukrhydrometeorological center, analyzes.

Leading Researcher of the Institute of Geophysics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Svetlana Boychenko explained to us that many factors are to blame for the frequent "weather swings" that have become common over the past few years.

“There are several hypotheses why the weather is behaving strangely now. These are the processes of a long period on the Sun (not the known 11-year, but 60-year cycles), and the intensification of volcanic activity, and the World Ocean, which either binds greenhouse gases, or releases them back into the atmosphere, this also reduces or increases temperature, Boychenko told us. - We conducted many years of research on how Ukraine has changed annual amplitude temperature variation (between the lowest and highest temperatures. - Auth.).

It turned out that winters in Ukraine have become much warmer, but for some reason summers are not much hotter, if not cooler, than 20-25 years ago. But over the past 10 years, a summer climate anomaly has also begun to appear, summer is becoming hotter. It seems that due to global warming, which is superimposed by factors such as intensified volcanic eruptions, throwing clouds of ash into the atmosphere, the weather is unbalanced. But we expect the anomalies to subside after 2020. This process has already begun, and every year the temperature amplitudes are getting smaller, and by 2030 there will be no such sharp drops as we are now seeing.”

This year, in addition to sharp summer weather fluctuations, Boychenko promises strong but short-lived frosts in January and February.