Features of the prevalence of Cd and Pb dissolved forms in the water of sections of the Oka river and other rivers of the Russian Plain are considered. The influence of anthropogenic wastewater (industrial, municipal and agricultural) containing heavy metals is clearly manifested only in certain sections of the rivers of central Russia (Oka River, Volga River, and Moscow River) against the background of natural landscape and geochemical processes. An attempt is made to develop approaches to assessing the degree of anthropogenic influence on the water composition of various river sections, including those remote from pollution zones. An ecological and geochemical lead–cadmium indicator is proposed, which makes it possible to assess the anthropogenic impact and divide river sections into 3 categories (strong, medium and weak pollution, respectively). The river sections with low anthropogenic pollution have high values of this indicator corresponding to waters with the background (or close to background) concentration. A decrease in the indicator values means an increase in the role of anthropogenic effluents in the water composition, and estimates of the average concentrations of elements are technogenically dependent.

Distribution features of cadmium, lead, partly Ag, Bi, In, Hg and Tl in suspended solids are considered. Studies were made on the Oka River in the area of the Prioksko-Terrasny Natural Biosphere Reserve on a river section remote from the zone of formation of the technogenic scattering stream, in the period 1983–2018. To assess the general trend of changes in the concentration of the elements over the period of the experiment, it was proposed to consider the results on their prevalence in the composition of suspended matter obtained in the intermediate hydrological phase of the river between the spring flood and the summer midden. This is the main feature and essence of our proposed approach in order to eliminate the influence of significant seasonal changes in the macro- and micro-component composition of suspensions. It is shown that the 35-year time interval can be divided into two periods, namely: the first one is characterized by a decrease in the concentration of heavy metals (Cd, Pb), while the second one is characterized by the absence of any trend, relatively weak fluctuations in values. The direction of changes in the concentration of elements in the first period correlates with the literature data on the dynamics of a decrease in the intake of anthropogenic wastewater into surface waters in recent decades and with the results of our assessment of the decrease in river water pollution upstream from the experimental area.

Based on our previously performed calculations of irradiation with high spatial and temporal resolutions, using data from high-precision astronomical ephemerides, changes in the intensity of summer irradiation in the polar and equatorial 5-degree latitude zones of the Northern Hemisphere were analyzed. Over the period of 1900–2050 AD, a decrease in the intensity of summer irradiation in the polar region and its increase in the equatorial region were observed. The consequences of this phenomenon are an increase in the meridional gradient of insolation and an increase in the intensity of the meridional transfer of radiative heat associated with the rise of land surface air temperature and ocean surface temperature in the Arctic.

The faster temperature increase in the Arctic compared to other regions can be explained by the fact that energy (heat) is transferred from a larger area (heat source) to a smaller one (heat sink). In the summer half-year, the source area of radiative heat is 4.5 times greater than the sink area. As a result, the relative values of thermal energy (temperature) increase.

It is shown that based on the relationships between the patterns of the natural environment in the Arctic and the characteristics of its irradiation, it is possible to predict climate changes and the natural environment state in the Arctic on the basis of the characteristics of irradiation calculated for future time periods.