Ingeborg Auer

• Dr.
• Head of Department at GeoSphere Austria

Abstract In situ data are an essential need in the analyses of past and current climate change. All over the world, different data rescue activities try to extend existing time series and to retrieve data in spatial and temporal data sparse regions. Also in Europe, part of the historic data is still only available in paper archives, without any dig...

Die Folgen des Klimawandels für die Gesundheit sind bereits heute spürbar und als zunehmende Bedrohung für die Gesundheit in Österreich einzustufen. Die stärksten Gesundheitsfolgen mit breiter Wirkung sind durch Hitze zu erwarten. Veränderungen in Ökosystemen begünstigen zudem das Auftreten von Pollenallergien und durch Vektoren übertragene Infekti...

Die Folgen des Klimawandels für die Gesundheit sind bereits heute spürbar und als zunehmende Bedrohung für die Gesundheit in Österreich einzustufen. Die stärksten Gesundheitsfolgen mit breiter Wirkung sind durch Hitze zu erwarten. Veränderungen in Ökosystemen begünstigen zudem das Auftreten von Pollenallergien und durch Vektoren übertragene Infekti...

The effects of climate change on health are already being felt today and can be classified as an increasing threat to health in Austria. The most severe and far- reaching effects to be expected are health impacts due to heat. Also changes in ecosystems which influence the distribution, frequency, types and severity of pollen allergies and vector-bo...

Draft guidance on the homogenisation of climate station data of the World Meteorological Organisation.

This is the pre-print of the Austrian Assessment Report on health, demography and climate change (ASR18) - summary for decision makers and synthesis; language German. English version is in preparation.

Three homogenization methods (ACMANT, MASH and HOMOP) have been evaluated for their efficiency in homogenizing daily relative humidity data. A homogeneous surrogate data set based on Austrian stations was created and perturbed to simulate inhomogeneous, realistic time series ("validation data sets"). Two validation data sets ("simple" and "complex"...

As part of the COST Action HOME a dataset has been generated that will serve as a benchmark for homogenisation algorithms. Members of the Action and third parties have been invited and are still welcome to homogenise this dataset. The results of this exercise was analysed to obtain recommendations for a standard homogenisation procedure and are des...

The effects of climate change on health are already being felt today and can be classified as an increasing threat to health in Austria. The most severe and far- reaching effects to be expected are health impacts due to heat. Also changes in ecosystems which influence the distribution, frequency, types and severity of pollen allergies and vector-bo...

Although the European Alps are one of the most investigated regions worldwide, maps depicting climate change by means of climate classification are still not-existent. To contribute to this topic, a time series of very high resolution (30 arc-seconds) maps of the well-known Köppen-Geiger climate classification is presented. The maps cover the great...

The eruption of Mount Tambora (Indonesia) in April 1815 is the largest documented volcanic eruption in history. It is associated with a large global cooling during the following year, felt particularly in parts of Europe and North America, where the year 1816 became known as the "year without a summer". This paper describes an effort made to collec...

The eruption of Mount Tambora (Indonesia) in April 1815 is the largest documented volcanic eruption in history. It caused a large global cooling during the following year, felt particularly in parts of Europe and North America, where the year 1816 became known as the "year without a summer". This paper describes an effort made to collect surface me...

Annually resolved and absolutely dated tree-ring chronologies are the most important proxy archives to reconstruct climate variability over centuries to millennia. However, the suitability of tree-ring chronologies to reflect the ''true'' spectral properties of past changes in temperature and hydroclimate has recently been debated. At issue is the...

Climate change is affecting many fields of the society, policy, economy and environment. Information on changes in the climate during the last centuries and especially in near and far future is essential. Estimation and quantification of changes in climate variables and indices are a necessary precondition for adaptation and mitigation measures. Th...

Fis chapter focuses on the needs and opportunities as well as the constraints and barriers with respect to mitigation and adaptation to climate change. While the chapter concentrates mainly on Austria, information is provided on the global and EU level to the extent they are relevant for Austria. Section 1.1 discusses the targets already speci8ed f...

The Carpathians are the longest mountain range in Europe and a geographic barrier between Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans. To investigate the climate of the area, the CARPATCLIM project members collected, quality-checked, homogenized, harmonized, and interpolated daily data for 16 meteorological variables and many derived indicators...

Instrumental time series are often affected by inhomogeneities which can mask or amplify climate change signals. Various procedures for the detection and adjustment of breaks exist for monthly and annual time series. Homogenization methods on a daily basis are scarce and often disregard uncertainties accompanying the break adjustment. We present a...

Between 2007-2011, the European COST Action ES0601 called HOME project was devoted to evaluate the performance of homogenization methods used in climatology and produce a software that would be a synthesis of the best aspects of some of the most efficient methods. HOMER (HOMogenizaton softwarE in R) is a software for homogenizing essential climate...

This study investigates storminess in northern Italy and the northern Adriatic Sea through the examination of several storm proxies. These proxies are based on homogenized daily mean pressure series given at a set of stations (Genoa, Milan, Padua, Turin, and Hvar). The application of widely accepted and well-known methods on pressure series allows...

Mountain observatories around the world are unique sites for monitoring and investigating variations, trends, forcings and feedbacks in the climate system, which are of utmost interest for understanding global climate change. From the small number of these research platforms, Sonnblick Observatory (Austrian Alps) stands out because of its long time...

In recent years increasing effort has been devoted to objectively evaluate the efficiency of homogenisation methods for climate data; an important effort was the blind benchmarking performed in the COST Action HOME (ES0601). The statistical characteristics of the examined series have significant impact on the measured efficiencies, thus it is diffi...

The COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) Action ES0601: advances in homogenization methods of climate series: an integrated approach (HOME) has executed a blind intercomparison and validation study for monthly homogenization algorithms. Time series of monthly temperature and precipitation were evaluated because of their importance...

The COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) Action ES0601: Advances in homogenization methods of climate series: an integrated approach (HOME) has executed a blind intercomparison and validation study for monthly homogenization algorithms. Time series of monthly temperature and precipitation were evaluated because of their importance...

Bosnia and Herzegovina is situated at the junction of three main climatic zones, namely, the Mediterranean, the Mountain and the Moderate Continental one. The Mountain Observatory Bjelašnica is located at the boundary between these climatic zones. The special location at the sharp transition between different climate regimes creates surnormally var...

One-day precipitation amounts over 300 mm are exceptional in the climate of Central Europe. They were recorded only three times within the time span of more than a hundred years: 29th July 1897 in Bohemia at the station Nová Louka/Neuwiese (345.1 mm), 5th July 1947 in Austria at the station Semmering (323.2 mm) and 12th August 2002 in Germany at th...

Instrumental time series of different climate elements are an important requisite for climate and climate impact studies. Long-term time series can improve our understanding of climate change during the instrumental period. During recent decades a number of national and international initiatives in European countries have significantly increased th...

Strakosch-Grassmann (1932*) reports about the first instrumental measurements in Vienna in 1697 for a span of eight months only. Later, continuous measurements have been carried out at the observatory of the Jesuit College since 1734, at the k.k. Universitätssternwarte (astronomical observatory of the University of Vienna) since 1762. Unfortunately...

Constantly changing climate, the availability of a higher resolved digital elevation model and further development of geostatistical interpolation methods gave reason for updating the most frequently demanded climate maps out of the Austrian digital climate atlas from 1961–1990 to 1971–2000. To achieve a station density as high as possible, data fr...

For further analysis of climate change variability resp. temperature anomalies we have to consider several interactions in the atmosphere more precisely. Especially the vertical interactions play a decisive part in our climate system (geo-biosphere) and should be studied in detail. In particular - if a longer time scale is the target - outlier test...

Introduction Data Spatialization Summary and outlook Acknowledgements Bibliography

The main object of the presented study was the creation of a high-resolution monthly temperature climatology for the greater Alpine region (GAR). This climatology, which is determined from observational averages for the period 1961-1990, necessitated a multinational, high-quality temperature dataset, in which especially inhomogeneities due to diffe...

Since March 2009 HISTALP, a vast collection of longterm, multiple, homogenized and outlier corrected monthly climate time series for the Alps and their wider surroundings is easy and well described available at the internet. The website provides not only the data which are kept in different modes (station-mode and three different grid-modes), but a...

The demand for climate extreme studies is getting more and more important. As a consequence reliable data of (at least) daily resolution are required. The examination of the data according to inhomogeneities is indispensable for these questions. The main objective of the "homogenization of daily data'' is to remove inhomogeneities not only in mean...

The ongoing climate change debate focuses more and more on changing extreme events. Information on past events can be derived from a number of sources, such as instrumental data, residual impacts in the landscape, but also chronicles and people's memories. A project called "A Tale of Two Valleys” within the framework of the research program "proVis...

In later 2007 the Austrian Weather Service (ZAMG) established a group that shall deal with climate change modeling. Two of the group's main goals are to provide climate change scenarios for the assessment of the impact on ecosystems and to reconstruct past climate states along with their change. The former aim is to derive estimates of might happen...

The influence of urban trends on temperature series is difficult to estimate by means of non-homogeneous series. The usual way to proceed is to split the dataset into two groups, non-urban and urban stations, homogenize them separately, and compare the two groups. This may be problematic when only few or just one series per group is available, whic...

The COST Action ES0601: Advances in homogenisation methods of climate series: an integrated approach is nearing the end of its second year of life. The action is intended to provide the best possible tools for the homogenization of time series to the climate research community. The involved scientists have done remarkable progress since COST Action...

In recent years the growing demand of extreme value studies has led to the development of methods for the homogenisation of daily data. The behaviour of some of these methods has been investigated: Two methods (HOM: Della-Marta and Wanner, 2006 and SPLIDHOM: Mestre et al., submitted) which adjust the whole distribution of the climate element (espec...

The extensive snow measurement network of the Sonnblick region (Hohe Tauern, Austrian Alps) is used to describe temporal trends of snow-depth as well as its relation to climate change for a high-elevated site of the European Alps (2400–3100 m.a.s.l.). Spatial representativeness of single snow stakes, with readings back to 1928, is derived for maxim...

An extensive analysis of the HISTALP database is presented with the aim of giving a comprehensive picture of secular climate variability and change in the Greater Alpine Region (GAR, 4–19 E, 43–49 N). The HISTALP database encompasses 242 sites and concerns temperature, pressure, precipitation, cloudiness, sunshine duration, vapour pressure and rela...

Introduction Wild animal habitats are greatly influenced by geographical location, structure, climate, fauna and flora and may extend deep into human settlement areas, depending on animal species. While this may be in accordance with ecological requirements, it also poses the danger of animal-human disease transmission. This research project aims a...

Mankind is currently experiencing a significant change of one of the most important factors controlling general living conditions on our planet–climate change. This climate change is partly anthropogenic. A quantification of the human factor influencing this shift in global climate is difficult to quantify for the past, present and the future. This...

This paper describes the HISTALP database, consisting of monthly homogenised records of temperature, pressure, precipitation, sunshine and cloudiness for the ‘Greater Alpine Region’ (GAR, 4–19°E, 43–49°N, 0–3500m asl). The longest temperature and air pressure series extend back to 1760, precipitation to 1800, cloudiness to the 1840s and sunshine to...

We analyze century-long daily temperature and precipitation records for stations in Europe west of 60°E. A set of climatic indices derived from the daily series, mainly focusing on extremes, is defined. Linear trends in these indices are assessed over the period 1901–2000. Average trends, for 75 stations mostly representing Europe west of 20°E, sho...

The paper investigates precipitation variability in the greater Alpine region (GAR) (4-19°E, 43-49°N) based on 192 instrumental series of homogenized and outlier checked monthly precipitation and on the 1° gridded version of the same data set. Compared to the previous data sets, the one used in this paper adds a full century of data (earliest serie...

A new precipitation data set for the Greater Alpine Region (GAR; 4°E-19°E, 43°N-49°N) has been developed. It provides monthly precipitation totals, for the 1800-2003 period, gridded at 10-min resolution. The new HISTALP 10-min-grid data set is based on 192 long-term homogenized precipitation series from meteorological stations across the study doma...

In this study, we set out to investigate the linkage of frost frequency to monthly mean temperature and its sensitivity to temperature changes. According to other related studies, the linkage between frost frequency and monthly mean temperature is approximated month per month via hyperbolic tangent functions. These models are validated using three...

Detrended climatic time series are in general not white but show on a multi-annual to decadal timescale significant anomalies, hereafter called ’outstanding periods’ (O.P.). Such O.P.s are the central subject/core of the study. Basis of the investigation are two datasets that cover the past 250 years and their consistencies at regional and multi-an...

The paper describes the development of a dataset of 192 monthly precipitation series covering the greater alpine region (GAR, 4–18°E by 43–49°N). A few of the time series extend back to 1800. A description is provided of the sometimes laborious processes that were involved in this work: from locating the original sources of the data to homogenizing...

A new precipitation dataset for the Greater Alpine Region (GAR; 4°E-19°E, 43°N-49°N) has been developed. It provides monthly precipitation totals for the 1800-2003 period on a 10-min resolution grid. The new 'HISTALP 10-min-grid' dataset is based on long-term homogenized precipitation series from meteorological stations across the study domain and...

The presentation discusses the potential, the needs and the state of the art of climate variability data quality and analysis in the instrumental period. The greater alpine region is used as an example. Problems and solutions concerning the non climatic noise in time series is discussed (the homogeneity and outlier problem) and some first results b...

The Greater Alpine Region (the GAR) covering the area between 4-19°E and 43-50°N and an altitude range between 0 and more than 4000 m asl. offers a challenging climate worth to be studied in any detail. However, it is surprising that up to now no comprehensive Alpine Temperature Climatology covering the whole region is exist- ing. To overcome this...

Based on quality checked time series of daily maximum temperature and 24h precipitation sums, heat waves at 12 stations up to an elevation of 800m and dry spells at 30 stations up to 3000m in Austria over the past 50 years were calculated and analysed. The analysis of the frequencies of heat waves and dry spells showed very differ-entiated results,...

A recently set up and homogenised new precipitation dataset for the Greater Alpine Region (GAR) is presented here with some first preliminary analyses. Climate change patterns within the study region are analysed in terms of regionally different evolutions, seasonality, and short to long-term trends. It will be shown that precipitation presents pro...

Snow is a significant element in the climate system and has great impact on ecosystem and economy in the Alps, too. Astonishingly there is still a strong gap between the data potential and the data availability. Caused by the existing deficits we started a digitising, quality evaluation, homogenising and analysing initiative for the Alpine region....

During the last years the question of climate variability and change has moved more and more into the public eye. Although the climate debate aims more to future climate the knowledge of past climate variability is the indispensably solid basis to understand the mechanisms of climate variability for the changes of future climate. In order to ach...

Zusammenfassung Das Klimaelement Niederschlag zeigt auf allen der raum-zeitlichen Skalen starke Variabilität, auch im langfristigen Trendverhalten. Ein neuer, räumlich dichter Datensatz von 192 homogenisierten instrumentellen Reihen in monatlicher Auflösung im Großraum Alpen wird hier vorgestellt , der bis zum Jahr 1800 zurückreicht. Erste Analysen...

Spatial correlations between Alpine high-elevation and European lowelevation instrumental air temperatures are computed to assess the spatial representativity of a high-Alpine ice-core isotope proxy temperature record. The correlation analyses indicate that air-temperature records at Alpine ice-core drill sites are representative for central Europe...

One of the objectives of EU-project ALPCLIM is the generation of a gridded data-set of monthly instrumental precipitation data. The area of investigation covers the Alps and wide regions of the surroundings from 4° to 18°E and 43° to 49° N. Grid distance is 1 deg longitude and 1 deg latitude. The project is not finished yet, more than 140 single se...

This paper investigates temperature variability in the Alps and their surroundings based on 97 instrumental series of monthly mean temperatures. A discussion of the initial homogenizing procedure illustrates its advantages and risks. A comparison of the homogenized series with the original series clearly shows the necessity to homogenize. Each of t...

Long term meteorological observations offer a large research potential for the study of climatic variability and change. Within the national funded Project ALOCLIM (Austrian Long Term Climate) a homogenised data set, consisting of 274 single series (see Table 2) has been developed. In addition, results from previous investigations increase the numb...

A carefully homogenized climate dataset is used to interpret glacier behaviour in the Austrian Alps. Periods of glacier advance are generally more maritime and cooler, with reduced sunshine duration and increased precipitation sum during the ablation period. Periods of retreat are associated with a more continental, warmer climate, with increased s...

Long-term in situ observations are widely used in a variety of climate analyses. Unfortunately, most decade- to century-scale time series of atmospheric data have been adversely impacted by inhomogeneities caused by, for example, changes in instrumentation, station moves, changes in the local environment such as urbanization, or the introduction of...

Long-term in situ observations are widely used in a variety of climate analyses. Unfortunately, most decade- to century-scale time series of atmospheric data have been adversely impacted by inhomogeneities caused by, for example, changes in instrumentation, station moves, changes in the local environment such as urbanization, or the introduction of...

Daily maximum and minimum temperatures from 29 low-lying and mountain stations of 7 countries in Central Europe were analyzed. The analysis of the annual variation of diurnal temperature range helps to distinguish unique climatic characteristics of high and low altitude stations. A comparison of the time series of extreme daily temperatures as well...

The retreat of Wurtenkees, a glacier of about 1 km2 in the European East Alps, is described by measurement of frontal change, interpretation of maps and a computed mass-balance series. Since 1850, Wurtenkees has been one of the most strongly retreating glaciers in this region. Mass balance has been measured since 1982. Measured values of the accumu...

Changes in maximum and minimum daily temperatures (TMAX and TMIN, respectively) in nine selected regions of central Europe and in Bulgaria during 1951-1990 are investigated. Average series for central Europe are compiled and analyzed by linear trend analysis and the kernel smoothing. The increase in the annual TMAX in central Europe was, during 195...

The retreat of Wurtenkees, a glacier of about 1 km2 in the European East Alps, is described by measurement of frontal change, interpretation of maps and a computed mass-balance series. Since 1850, Wurtenkees has been one of the most strongly retreating glaciers in this region. Mass balance has been measured since 1982. Measured values of the accumu...

A questionnaire on climate change has been designed to obtain an actual overview on the opinion of an international sample of experts on that matter. A total of 100 responses have been evaluated, roughly a third came from Austrian, two thirds from other colleagues around the world. Although this way of testing our knowledge about a rather vital and...

Using a dense network of carefully tested and homogenized long-term temperature and precipitation data this paper describes climatic variations during the last 150 years for both these important climatic elements. It turned out that the response of precipitation to climate warming is quite different within a small region, of 7 degrees longitude by...

A high quality climate data set of sufficient length and temporal and spatial resolution is the indispensable requirement to assess climate variability and extremes on regional scale. Supported by the Interreg III Alpine Space Programme the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG) has set up a data recovery and rescue initiative to ext...

Der Großraum Alpen, vom Rhonetal bis zur ungarischen Tiefebene und von der Cote d'Azur bis zu den Vogesen, der schwäbischen Alp und dem Böhmerwald, ist das Gebiet mit weltweit den meisten langen Klimazeitreihen. In mehr als 10jähriger Zusammenarbeit mit den vielen Daten Erzeugern wie Wetterdiensten, Hydrographischen Ämtern, aber auch Universitäten...