Peculiarities of climatic changes in cloud cover over the Russian Federation

Modern climatic changes in cloud cover over Russia are analyzed from standard ground-based meteorological observations in 1951–2000 and information on cloudiness obtained from the actinometrical observations in 1976–2000. In addition to studies of changes in total cloud amount, a special attention is paid to the distribution of basic forms of cloudiness with respect to their frequency. A spatial generalization of the results for large-scale regions (the European and Asian parts of Russia) allowed revealing dominant tendencies in cloud cover changes that are slightly related to seasons of year and reflect large-scale changes in cloud characteristics in the second half of the 20th century.