Such a forum has never been organized for last decade. About 300 participants from over Russia (predominantly) and 7 countries have met. Reports have been associated within 6 sessions dedi-cated to several themes: 1) meteorology and weather forecasting, 2) hydrology including oceanog-raphy, 3) climate change and its modeling, 4) weather and climate modifications, 5) environ-mental (e.g. air pollution) monitoring, 6) data processing, information and public service.

Since the sessions were working at three separate sites within the St. Petersburg city, one can lis-ten only a some part of the reports. I have participated in two sessions: hydrology and climate. Hence, I would like to impart on those remarkable issues and reports presented there. It will be only a hot news, of course, more sound report I could not make here.

Plenary session was held in the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI, www.aari.nw.ru) where there is a convenient and large meeting hall as well as a lot of modern communicative fa-cilities. There have been announced welcome and greetings, the agenda, and developed 8 review-ing reports on basic achievements (and difficulties as well) in respective fields.

The second sessions took place at the State Hydrological Institute (SHI). About 50 reports have been presented including 20 posters. Of particular interest were the following reports:

• Bousin, V.A. (SHI, Russia) Ice jams: Advances in forecasting methodology
• Burlibaev, M.J. (Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology, Almaty, Kazakhstan) On the role of hydrological regime in stability of riverine ecosystems
• Kaljuzhny, I.L., and S.A. Lavrov (SHI, Russia) Perspective of using the soil physical data in operational spring flood prediction
• Lourie, P.M. (Northern Caucasus Regional Weather Service, Rostov on Don, Russia) Hy-drological role of the glacial zone of the Caucasus Mountains
• Markov, M.L. (SHI, Russia) On interrelation between surface and sub-surface flows
• Novikov, S.M. (SHI, Russia) Environmental issues of the economical development in wet-land abounded areas
• Piankov, S.V., and V.G. Kalinin (Perm' State University, Perm', Russia) GIS-based ap-proach to evaluation of watershed characteristics with reference to runoff calculations
• Polonsky, V.F., L.P. Ostroumova, and O.V. Gorelits (State Oceanographic Institute, Mos-cow, Russia) Long-term natural and man-made fluctuations in hydrological regimes of es-tuaries and river mouths
• Shiklomanov, A.I., O.F. Golovanov, and S.V. Golovanova (AARI, Russia) Increasing wa-ter inflow to the Arctic Ocean and its consequences
• Solntsev, V.N., and T.N. Filatova (SHI, Russia) Using the "caterpillar" method in time se-ries analysis (as applied to hydrological regime of the Chudskoje lake)

The author contributed with two reports:

• Shutov, V.A. Weather radar information for runoff calculations (see here radar.shtml)
• Shutov, V.A. Spatial distribution of the snow cover as applied to spring flood forecasting

The third session was held in the Main Geophysical Observatory (MGO, www.main.mgo.rssi.ru).

Here 62 reports have been presented including 21 poster. I can listen only those developed on April 25, and many of them were of interest just for me. These are in particular:

• Akimov, I.V., and P.Yu. Ignatov (The Hydro-meteorological Center, Moscow, Russia) Testing the method for precipitation calculations implied to climate models
• Karol', I.L., I.L.Yagovkina, V.A. Zubov, A.I. Reshetnikov, A.V. Zinchenko, N.N. Para-monova, V.I. Privalov (MGO, Russia), and V.E. Lagun (AARI, Russia) Estimating the input of methane into the atmosphere from developing gas fields and wetlands of Western Siberia: Three-dimensional modeling and observation results
• Katsov, V.M. (MGO, Russia) Three-dimensional modeling of the high latitude climate
• Rubinstein, K.G. (The Hydro-meteorological Center, Moscow, Russia) Climate changes in large cities (e.g. Moscow and New York) and their impact on the environment
• Shiklomanov, I.A., V.A. Georgievsky, and A.L. Shalygin (SHI, Russia) Influence of the global warming on runoff of the largest rivers in Russia
• Yakunin, L.P., and V.V. Butynets (The Far Eastern State University, Vladivostok, Russia) Ice cover of the Far East (Pacific) seas as an indicator of the climate changes

The author has contributed with a poster presentation on newly developed collaborative theme "Comparison and inter-validation of satellite-based and land-based data to apply them to the LSPs in climate models" (see here purposes.shtml and climate_lsp.shtml).

Of those reports which I recognized only by their extended abstracts (illustrated) published prior to the Conference, the following seem to be of particular value:

• Ivanov, V.N. (The "Taifun", Joint Institute for Research and Development, Obninsk, Russia) and A.V. Khokhlova (The Institute for Data Acquisition and Information in Hydro-meteorology, Obninsk, Russia) Modulating the regular daily time course of the meteorological variables by low-frequency undulations - Session 1
• Sklyarov, Yu. A., N.V. Semyonova, Yu. I. Brichkov, and A.I. Kotuma (Saratov State Univer-sity, Saratov, Russia) Radiation measurements by satellite-borne sensors - Session 1
• Fakhrutdinova, A.N., Yu. P. Perevedentsev, and D.V. Korotyshkin (Kazan' State University, Kazan', Republic of Tatarstan, Russia) Long-term variations in solar activity and air tempera-ture by observations from 1828 to the present year - Session 3
• Belan, B.D., V.V. Belov, G.G. Matvienko, M.V. Panchenko, and Yu. N. Ponomaryov (The Atmospheric Optics Institute of the Russian Academy of Science, Tomsk, Russia, www.iao.ru) Investigations in environmental monitoring using the lidars - Session 5
• Eryomina, I.D. (Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia) Long-term observations for precipitation chemistry over the Moscow city - Session 5
• Besprosvannykh, A.V. (The Institute for Data Acquisition and Information in Hydro-meteorology, Obninsk, Russia) Internet-based technologies for hydro-meteorological data treatment, information and public service - Session 6
• Kleshchenko, A.D., E.K. Zoidze (The Institute for Agricultural Meteorology, Obninsk, Rus-sia), G.A. Melkonyan (Armenian Hydro-meteorology Service, Yerevan, Armenia), and V.I. Mel'nik (Belorussian Hydro-meteorology Service, Minsk, Belorussia) Purposes of the Interna-tional Center for Drought Monitoring - Session 6

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