Climate change in the Carpathian Region

To investigate the climate of the Carpathian Region (17°-27°E; 44°-50°N), the European Commission launched in 2010 and financed the CARPATCLIM project. The CARPATCLIM consortium was made by nine country members (Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine) under the scientific and technical coordination of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC). The CARPATCLIM members collected, quality-checked, homogenized, harmonized, and interpolated daily data for sixteen meteorological variables and more than thirty derived indicators related to the period 1961-2010. The principal outcome of the project is the Climate Atlas of the Carpathian Region, hosted on a dedicated website (www.carpatclim-eu.org) and made of high-resolution daily grids (0.1°x0.1°) of all variables and indicators. In order to describe the climate evolution of the Carpathian Region, we analyzed the spatial and temporal variability of ten variables: minimum, mean, and maximum temperature, daily temperature range, precipitation, cloud cover, relative sunshine duration, relative humidity, surface air pressure, and wind speed. For each variable, we performed a linear trend analysis on an annual and seasonal basis. Temperature was found to increase in every season, in particular in the last three decades, confirming the trends occurring in Europe; wind speed decreased in every season; cloud cover and relative humidity decreased in spring, summer, and winter, and increased in autumn, whilst relative sunshine duration behaved in the opposite way; precipitation and surface air pressure showed no significant trend, though they increased slightly on an annual basis. In the Carpathian region positive/negative sunshine duration anomalies are highly correlated to the corresponding temperature anomalies during the global dimming (1960s-1970s) and brightening (1990s-2000s) periods.JRC.H.7-Climate Risk Managemen

Analysis of Sub-Daily Precipitation for the PannEx Region

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 project, to produce a set of global hydro-climatic indices. Calculations are carried out on data aggregated 1-, 3- and 6-h intervals. Selected indices are analyzed in this paper to assess the general climatology of the short-term precipitation in the Pannonian basin. The following indices are illustrated on maps and graphs: the annual mean and maxima of 1-h, 3-h and 6-h sums, the count of 3-hr periods greater than 20 mm thresholds, the maximum length of wet hours, the timing of wettest hour and the 1-h precipitation intensity. The seasonal trends of the 1-h precipitation intensity were tested from 1998 to 2019. Analysis of sub-daily precipitation has been limited by the availability of data on a global or a regional scale. The international effort made in this work through collaboration in the PannEx initiative contributes to enlarging the data availability for regional and global analysis of sub-daily precipitation extremes

Climate of the Carpathian Region in the period 1961–2010: climatologies and trends of 10 variables

The Carpathians are the largest mountain range in Europe and they represent a geographic barrier between Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans. In order to investigate the climate of the area, the CARPATCLIM project members compiled the Climate Atlas of the Carpathian Region, which consists of high-resolution daily grids (0.1˚ x 0.1˚) of sixteen meteorological variables and many derived indicators related to 1961-2010. We computed the gridded climatologies for 1961-2010 for eight variables (air pressure, cloudiness, precipitation, relative humidity, minimum and maximum temperature, sunshine duration, and wind speed) and we discuss their spatial patterns. For each variable, we calculated the gridded linear trends related to 1961-2010 both on annual and seasonal basis. In general, temperature was found to increase in every season in 1986-2010, confirming the trends occurring in Europe in the last decades. On the other way, wind speed decreased in every season. Cloudiness and relative humidity decreased in spring, summer, and winter, and increased in autumn, whilst sunshine duration, as expected, behaved in the opposite way. Precipitation slightly increased and air pressure showed no significant trend, except of a few grid points. Then, we dealt with the correlation between the variables: excluding the high elevation points, the most correlated are sunshine duration and temperature. In particular, positive and negative sunshine duration anomalies are found to be respectively correlated with positive and negative temperature anomalies during the global dimming (60’s and 70’s) and brightening (90’s and 2000’s) periods.JRC.H.7-Climate Risk Managemen