Petr Stepanek

• PhD
• Researcher at Global Change Research Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences

Background The increasing threat of fire caused by ongoing climate change requires accurate and timely prediction for the effective management of extreme fire situations. The limited research on the connection between fire danger metrics and the occurrence of wildfires in the forested and agricultural landscapes of the Czech Republic underscores th...

The interaction of large-scale flow and local topography can lead to various meteorological phenomena. A prominent example is foehn, a dry and warm leeward wind. Foehn’s impact on near-surface meteorological parameters and its formation mechanisms have been extensively studied in the Alps and other regions worldwide. However, less attention has bee...

Integrated modelling of climate change impacts in the soil–plant–atmosphere system can improve agroecosystem resilience and resource use efficiency. For the research on tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.), bell sweet peppers (Capsicum annuum L.), and winter oilseed rape (Brassica napus L.), the CSM-CROPGRO-Tomato, CSM-CROPGRO-Papper and CSM-CROPGRO-Ca...

Phenological shifts in wild-growing plants and wild animal phenophases are well documented at many European sites. Less is known about phenological shifts in agricultural plants and how wild ecosystem phenology interacts with crop phenology. Here, we present long-term phenological observations (1961–2021) from the Czech Republic for wild plants and...

Background : The increasing threat of fire caused by ongoing climate change requires accurate and timely prediction for the effective management of extreme fire situations. The limited research on the connection between fire danger metrics and the occurrence of wildfires in the forested and agricultural landscapes of the Czech Republic underscores...

Phenological shifts in wild-growing plants and wild animal phenophases are well documented at many European sites. Less is known about phenological shifts in agricultural plants and how wild ecosystem phenology interacts with crop phenology. Here, we present long-term phenological observations (1961-2021) from the Czech Republic for wild plants and...

In many regions of Europe, large wild herbivores alter forest community composition through their foraging preferences, hinder the forest's natural adaptive responses to climate change, and reduce ecosystem resilience. We investigated a widespread European forest type, a mixed forest dominated by Picea abies, which has recently experienced an unpre...

Contextualising anthropogenic warming and investigating linkages between past climate variability and human history require high-resolution temperature reconstructions that extend before the period of instrumental measurements. Here, we present maximum latewood density (MXD) measurements of 534 living and relict Pinus uncinata trees from undisturbe...

The 2022 summer fire in the Bohemian Switzerland National Park (BSNP) is the largest in the 30-year recorded history of the Czech Republic, with an affected area of over 1000 ha. The FlamMap fire modeling system was used to investigate the fire behavior in the BSNP and to evaluate scenarios under a range of fuel types, fuel moistures, and weather c...

The paper demonstrates “collaboration” between the stochastic weather generator SPAGETTA (WG) and Regional Climate Models (RCM) in analysing impacts of Climate Change (CC). In the first part of the paper, the generator is compared with the ensemble of 19 RCMs in terms of their ability to reproduce 11 spatial temperature and precipitation indices in...

To better understand the impact of climate change at a given location, it is crucial to consider a wide range of climate models that are representative of the area. In this study, we emphasize the importance of the careful validation and selection of climate models most suitable for a particular region. This step is critical to enhance the relevanc...

The agricultural land represents the most important form of land use, accounting for almost 48% of the European land area. Europe- Despite its relatively small share of global agriculture land total area (9.8%), has been one of the world’s largest and most productive suppliers of food and fibre. Europe accounted for 17.6% of the global cereal produ...

The 2022 summer fire in Bohemian Switzerland National Park (BSNP) is ranked as the largest in the Czech Republic´s 30-year recorded history, with an affected area over 1000 ha. The FlamMap fire modeling system was used to investigate the fire behavior associated with the BSNP and to evaluate scenarios under a range of fuel types, fuel moistures, an...

Central Europe has experienced a sequence of unprecedented summer droughts since 2015, which had considerable effects on the functioning and productivity of natural and agricultural systems. Placing these recent extremes in a long-term context of natural climate variability is, however, constrained by the limited length of observational records. He...

Analysis of a long-term temperature variability of mountains has been neglected for a long time. Here we homogenised and reconstructed four temperature series (1961–2020) of selected mountain stations situated above 1000 m representing the area of northern Moravian mountain ridges (the Czech Republic) and their spatiotemporal variability was examin...

Study Region: The Thaya river basin provides multiple water uses in the transboundary region of Lower Austria and Southern Moravia. Due to the low precipitation (P) to reference evapotranspiration (ETo) ratio, the Thaya river basin is among the most sensitive to climate change in the region. Study Focus: The main objective is to understand the cha...

Producing an accurate and calibrated probabilistic forecast has high social and economic value. Systematic errors or biases in the ensemble weather forecast can be corrected by postprocessing models whose development is an urgent challenge. Traditionally, the bias correction is done by employing linear regression models that estimate the conditiona...

Extensive road construction works recently took place in the remote eastern part of the Peruvian Cordillera Blanca, aiming at a better connection of isolated mountain communities with regional administrative centres. Here we document and characterize landslides associated with these road construction efforts in the Río Lucma catchment, Peru. We sho...

The present study analyses 61 years of phenological observations (1961–2021) of five herb, five shrub, four tree, and one bird species representing the prevalent spring species of floodplain forest ecosystems in the Czech Republic, central Europe. The in situ observations were conducted at the Vranovice site (48°48′ N, 16°46′ E, 170 m above mean se...

The close relationship between the onset and severity of agricultural and hydrological drought is considered self-evident, yet relatively few studies have addressed the effects of applying agricultural drought adaptation to hydrological drought characteristics. The present study applies a model cascade capable of simultaneously considering the inte...

Tree rings provide valuable insight into past environmental changes. This study aimed to evaluate perturbations in tree ring width (TRW) and δ15N alongside soil acidity and nutrient availability gradients caused by the contrasting legacy of air pollution (nitrogen [N] and sulphur [S] deposition) and tree species (European beech, Silver fir and Norw...

The widely used Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) monthly temperature dataset is available in two formats—non-homogenized and homogenized. Since 2011, this homogenized dataset has been updated almost daily by applying the “Pairwise Homogenization Algorithm” (PHA) to the non-homogenized datasets. Previous studies found that the PHA can pe...

The widely used Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) monthly temperature dataset is available in two formats—non-homogenized and homogenized. Since 2011, this homogenized dataset has been updated almost daily by applying the “Pairwise Homogenization Algorithm” (PHA) to the non-homogenized datasets. Previous studies found that the PHA can pe...

This paper presents the characteristics of extreme temperatures in the Czech Republic, as calculated from homogenized series of daily maximum (TMAX) and daily minimum (TMIN) temperatures recorded by 133 climatological stations throughout the territory in the 1961–2020 period. In general, statistically significant increasing linear trends were recog...

Thirty-year periods are treated in climatology as spans with relatively representative and stable climatic patterns, which can be used for calculating climate normals. Annual and seasonal series of circulation types were used to compare two 30-year sub-periods, 1961–1990 and 1991–2020, the second one being strongly influenced by recent global warmi...

Many studies in Europe have investigated the relationship between climatological variables and circulation patterns expressed by various classifications of circulation types. This study provides new insights based on an analysis of precipitation in the western (Bohemia—BOH) and eastern (Moravia and Silesia—M&S) parts of the Czech Republic with resp...

The occurrence of major wildfires in countries such as Portugal, Italy and Spain (2017) and Sweden (2018) indicated that wildfires pose a risk across Europe. While Central Europe has not been at the center of such events, observed climate data and climate projections suggest a tendency toward more years with wet and warm winters and dry and hot sum...

This study quantified the crop water consumption, crop-specific irrigation requirements, and availability of water resources to catchments under climate change in the Czech Republic (CZ). Within the SoilClim model and BILAN-WATERES hydrological water balance modeling process, we tried to answer the question of whether there are at least theoretical...

The European drought of 1921 is assessed in terms of its impacts on society and in terms of its physical characteristics. The development of impacts of the drought are categorized by a systematic survey of newspaper reports from five European newspapers covering the area from England to the Czech Republic and other parts of Europe. This is coupled...

Satisfactory requirements for the spatial resolution of climate and the influences of soil data in defining the starting points, endings, and the intensities of droughts have become matters of discussion in recent years. The overall inclusiveness of the modelling tools applied is also frequently discussed. In this light, five model setups (MSs) of...

The PannEx is a GEWEX-initiated, community driven research network in the Pannonian Basin. One of the main scientific issues to address in PannEx is the investigation of precipitation extremes. Meteorological Services in the PannEx area collected the hourly precipitation data and commonly used a computer program, which was developed in the INTENSE...

This study analyses long‐term changes in drought indices (Standardised Precipitation Index—SPI, Standardised Precipitation–Evapotranspiration Index—SPEI) at 1 and 3 months scales at 182 stations in 11 central and eastern European countries during 1949–2018. For comparative purposes, the necessary atmospheric evaporative demand (AED) to obtain SPEI...

Climate warming is having profound effects on the hydrological cycle by increasing atmospheric demand, changing water availability, and snow seasonality. Europe suffered three distinct heat waves in 2019, and 11 of the 12 hottest years ever recorded took place in the past two decades, which will potentially change seasonal streamflow patterns and l...

Landslides or landslide-induced impact waves in high mountain lakes represent a high hazard for society, calling for realistic assessments of rock slope stability responsible for the process chain initiation. This task is often hampered by complex interplays of triggers, which effects on slope stability may be delayed by decades or even millennia,...

Landslides or landslide-induced impact waves in high mountain lakes represent a highhazard for society, calling for realistic assessments of rock slope stability responsible forthe process chain initiation. This task is often hampered by complex interplays of triggers, which effects on slope stability may be delayed by decades or even millennia, wh...

The European drought of 1921 is assessed in terms of its impacts on society and in terms of its physical characteristics. The development of impacts of the drought are categorized by a systematic survey of newspaper reports from five European newspapers covering the area from England to the Czech Republic and other parts of Europe. This is coupled...

Outbreaks of tree-killing insects are intensifying globally, affecting economies, human well-being, and driving ecosystem transitions. The Czech Republic has recently become Europe’s epicenter of the outbreak of spruce bark beetle Ips typographus, the most aggressive species in Eurasia. We investigated a countrywide outbreak dynamic during the peri...

The paper shows a large-scale shift in agroclimatic zones in the territory of the Czech Republic (CR) between 1961 and 2019. The method used for agroclimatic zoning took advantage of high-resolution (0.5 km × 0.5 km) daily climate data collected from 268 climatological and 787 rain-gauge stations. The climate information was combined with soil and...

This paper presents a comprehensive spatiotemporal analysis of precipitation patterns over the territory of the Czech Republic for the 1961–2019 period. Monthly, seasonal and annual series of precipitation totals and numbers of precipitation days were calculated for four altitudinal groups and the entire Czech Republic, based upon the daily precipi...

Key message Effect of drought during 2017 and 2018 resulted in radial stem increment reduction to 78% and 61%, respectively, of the levels occurring in normal year 2016 in Central Europe. Abstract Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) is currently the most threatened commercial tree species in Central Europe. This is due to increased drought str...

Recent drought and a surge in days with weather conditions conducive to wildfire occurrence during 2015–2019 reminded the Czech Republic that it is not immune to this type of natural hazard. Although Central Europe has not been at the center of such events, observed climate data and climate projections suggest a tendency toward more years with wet...

Among the variables that can be employed to characterize agricultural drought, soil drought is of particular importance. This contribution uses gridded soil‐drought values calculated from the SoilClim model for the 1961–2019 period to analyse soil drought episodes (based on the 10th percentile) in four lowlands, relatively homogeneous regions in ce...

This paper presents a comprehensive trend analysis of spatiotemporal temperature change patterns over the territory of what is now the Czech Republic (CR) during the 1961–2019 period. Employing daily mean temperatures (TAVG), maximum (TMAX) and minimum (TMIN) temperatures and diurnal temperature range (DTR), supplied by 133 stations of the Czech Hy...

Evaporation from open water surfaces is often estimated based on the pan evaporation (Epan), which is an essential measure for estimating atmospheric evaporative demand. Within the Central European region, Epan appears to be slightly underestimated in the case of the hydrological balance of water bodies. In the context of the recent multi-year peri...

Covering large parts of Europe, Norway spruce (Picea abies L Karst.) plays an important role in the adaptation strategy of forest services to future climate change. Although dendroecology can provide valuable information on the past relationships between tree growth and climate, most previous studies were biased towards species-specific distributio...

The Kinzl Glacier is a unique dendritic-type glacier of the Peruvian Cordillera Blanca and is surrounded by well-developed Little Ice Age (LIA) moraines. Based on field observations and analysis of historical photographs (since 1932) and remotely sensed images (since 1948), we interpret distinct mechanisms of landslides in these moraines and link t...

The awareness of drought and its impacts on Central Europe increased after the significant drought episodes in 2000, 2003, 2012 and 2015, which were all estimated to have caused over 500 million Euro in damage in the Czech Republic alone. These events indicated the need for timely and high‐resolution monitoring tools that would enable analysing, mo...

Homogenization of daily temperature series is a fundamental step for climatological analyses. In the last decades, several methods have been developed, presenting different statistical and procedural approaches. In this study, four homogenization methods (together with two variants) have been tested and compared. This has been performed constructin...

This study focuses on estimation of the impacts of anticipated global climate change on water balance in forested headwater catchment. The investigated catchment is located in the Šumava National Park (Bohemian Forest) in the southern part of the Czech Republic. We calculated nine future water balance scenarios for periods of 2021–2050 and 2071–210...

Seniors constitute the population group generally most at risk of mortality due to heat stress. As life expectancy increases and health conditions of elderly people improve over time, vulnerability of the population to heat changes as well. We employed the years-of-life-lost (YLL) approach, considering life expectancy at the time of each death, to...

SPAGETTA weather generator was created by spatialising parametric single-site M&Rfi generator PREC occurrence ~ Markov chain PREC amount ~ Gamma distribution non-PREC variables (including TEMPerature) ~ AR(1) model spatialisation (~Wilks 2009): 2 parallel multivariate AR models control the spatial coherence of PREC and non-PREC variables SPAGETTA i...

The paper deals with the analysis of a river’s regime of a small watercourse and the evaluation of its changes after the construction of a small water reservoir. The aim of the work was to analyse 12 years of flow rate measurements at two profiles of a small watercourse, between which a small water reservoir was built, in the middle of the period o...

Forest altitudinal zones are important ecological units of forest classification in the Czech Republic. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the changes of climate characteristics of forest altitudinal zones (FAZ) during climatic seasons of 1961-1990 and 1991-2014 in the Czech Republic. Based on these changes, the risks within forestry are...

Disturbances alter composition, structure, and functioning of forest ecosystems, and their legacies persist for decades to centuries. We investigated how temperate forest landscapes may recover their carbon (C) after severe wind and bark beetle disturbance, while being exposed to climate change. We used the forest landscape and disturbance model iL...

Non‐meteorological factors may bias wind speed measurements in a number of ways, among them the types of instruments used, their calibration and standards of maintenance, station relocations, and changes in the physical surroundings of a given station. Moreover, homogenisation of series of such measurements is more complicated than that of other cl...

A first-time common cross-border assessment of observed climatic changes in the Saxon–Bohemian region was the aim of the German–Czech climate cooperation INTERKLIM. This paper focuses on the observed changes of temperature and precipitation averages and extremes within the period 1961–2010, investigating how variations of a range of climate indices...

Cities are complex socioecological systems that are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and are also exposed to other trends, such as urbanization and population aging. Due to the changing climate, days with extreme temperatures are expected to become more numerous, which is particularly important for urban areas, where the urb...

We examined a future change of Köppen–Geiger climate classification zones in central Europe in the 21st century using the high‐resolution (10 km) bias‐corrected simulations of two regional climate models following the IPCC SRES A1B emission scenario. Temperate oceanic climate (Cfb) will remain the dominant climate type in central Europe but it will...

VALUE is an open European collaboration to intercompare downscaling approaches for climate change research, focusing on different validation aspects (marginal, temporal, extremes, spatial, process‐based, etc.). Here we describe the participating methods and first results from the first experiment, using “perfect” reanalysis (and reanalysis‐driven r...

In recent years, two drought monitoring systems have been developed in the Czech Republic based on the SoilClim and AVISO soil moisture models. The former is run by Mendel University and Global Change Research Institute (CAS), while the latter, by the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute. SoilClim is based more on real soil properties and aimed prim...

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 main objective of this study was to project changes in the evolution of drought characteristics (frequency, duration and magnitude) during the 21st century in lowlands, highlands and mountainous regions in the Czech Republic (CR). We focused on the multi-scalar nature of droughts as a function of the variables that govern the balance of moistur...

Monthly, seasonal and annual wind-speed series from 119 meteorological stations in the Czech Republic indicate significant decreasing trends in the period 1961-2015. Attribution analysis, applying multiple linear regression, was used to identify wind-speed components related to natural and anthropogenic climate forcings and internally induced clima...

The aim of this study is to determine the influence of selected environmental factors on the dynamic changes in the landscape in the Czech Republic: 1) to detect land use changes between 1986–2013 along altitudinal gradients in two neighbouring Czech districts (Třebič and Znojmo), 2) to test if there is a relationship between the spatial distributi...

The growth response of trees to changing climate is frequently discussed as increasing temperatures and more severe droughts become major risks for forest ecosystems. However, the ability of trees to cope with the changing climate and the effects of other environmental factors on climate-growth relationships are still poorly understood. There is th...

Tree growth response to recent environmental changes is of key interest for forest ecology. This study addressed the following questions with respect to Norway spruce (Picea abies, L. Karst.) in Central Europe: Has tree growth accelerated during the last five decades? What are the main environmental drivers of the observed tree radial stem growth a...

This contribution analyses the spatio-temporal variability of mean daily wind speeds (MDWSs) over the territory of the Czech Republic in the 1961–2015 period, using series from the 119 meteorological stations of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute. These series were quality-controlled and homogenised by application of the Standard Normal Homoge...

It is very likely that the intensity of precipitation over land in the middle latitudes is going to increase by 2100.This chapter deals with the comparison between measured (1981–2010) and simulated (2010–2100) three-day precipitation totals across the area of the Czech Republic. The future precipitation totals were calculated on the basis of five...

We have investigated the future changes of climate conditions during the winter season in the Beskids Mountains. During the 21 st century mean winter temperature will increase by 2.0–6.3 °C and winter precipitation will increase by 12.5 – to 17.5 % - depending on the scenario. Higher winter temperatures will be reflected in the reduced number of fr...

Climate is an important driver of forest health, productivity, and carbon cycle, but our understanding of these effects is limited for many regions and ecosystems. We present here a large-scale evaluation of climate effects on the productivity of three temperate tree species. We determine whether the National Forest Inventory data (NFI) collected i...

It is very likely that the intensity of extreme precipitation over land in the middle latitudes is going to increase by 2100. This paper deals with comparison between measured three-day precipitation totals on the area of the Czech Republic in the period 1981–2010 and three-day rainfall calculated on the basis of five regional climatic models for v...

This study addresses the reconstruction of 4 slightly different drought indices in the Czech Lands (now the Czech Republic) back to 1501 AD. Reconstructed monthly temperatures for Central Europe that are representative for the Czech territory, together with reconstructed seasonal precipitation totals from the same area, are used to calculate monthl...

An increase in drought frequency, duration and severity is expected for the Central European region as a direct consequence of climate change. This will have profound effects on a number of key sectors (e.g. agriculture, forestry, energy production and tourism) and also affect water resources, biodiversity and the landscape as a whole. However, glo...

The end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century in the Czech Republic were characterized by frequent extreme water cycle fluctuations, i.e. the occurrence of increased incidences of flood and drought events. Drought occurs irregularly in the Czech Republic during periods with low precipitation amounts. The most noteworthy droughts...

The timing of maturity of grapes depends on the weather conditions during the growing season. This study relies on the dependence of harvest dates on the air temperature and dry/wet conditions. Recorded observations show that increases in air temperature and dryness are associated with earlier grape harvests. Documentary data of grape harvests from...

Europe is, after Asia, the second largest producer of wheat in the world, and provides the largest share of barley. Wheat (and to a similar extent, barley) production in Europe increased by more than 6-fold during the 20th century. During the first half of the 20th century, this was driven by expanding the harvested area. This was followed, from th...

The Journal regrets that the author's names were tagged incorrectly resulting in author forenames appearing as surnames. The correct author names are: Filip Oulehle, Jiří Kopáček, Tomáš Chuman, Vladimír Černohous, Iva Hůnová, Jakub Hruška, Pavel Krám, Zora Lachmanová, Tomáš Navrátil, Petr Štěpánek, Miroslav Tesař, Christopher D. Evans. The Journal...

We examined the effect of individual environmental factors on the current spruce tree growth assessed from a repeated country-level statistical landscape (incl. forest) survey in the Czech Republic. An extensive set of variables related to tree size, competition, site characteristics including soil texture, chemistry, N deposition and climate was t...