Statistically downscaled projections of local scale temperature in the topographically complex terrain of Austria up to the end of the 21

This paper provides local scale temperature scenarios for Austria from the middle up to the end of the 21st century. Climate simuations based on the IPCC emission pathways A2 and A1B have been carried out with the global climate models ECHAM5 (three A1B and two A2 realizations) and HadGEM2 (three A1B realizations). The corresponding large scale projections of sea level pressure and 850 hPa temperature fields are statistically downscaled to stations spread across Austria using a perfect prognosis (PP) approach and Multiple Regression Models. The downscaling performance is assessed by a split sample test. Simulated time series are compared to actual measurements by means of the simulated variance, the root mean square and the mean error. Performances are highest during the cold season and sites located in valleys exhibit somewhat lower values. In summer performances show about a 10 percent lower skill than in winter. Downscaled local scale scenarios differ between seasons, scenarios, GCMs and regions in Austria. A1B estimates derived from ECHAM5 indicate a winter-temperature increase of approximately 3 °C at the end of the 21st century compared to present conditions, which is about one degree above the HadGEM2 based projections. This situation is reversed in summer: the HadGEM2 based projections show a warming of about 4 °C while those derived from ECHAM5 indicate a 0.5 °C lower warming. Statistically downscaled winter warming rates at stations <1400m$<1400\,\text{m}$ NN can be roughly split into three regions. The stations exhibiting the largest warming rates are located in the north-eastern parts of Austria, whilst stations showing the lowest increases are located south of the Alpine ridge. The rest of the stations are found north of the Alpine crest in the north-western parts of Austria. In summer spatially rather uniform temperature increases are detected. Mountain sites above 1400 m NN exhibit an average warming of around 0.5 °C higher than the remaining stations

Klimawandel in Österreich – Die letzten 20.000 Jahre ... und ein Blick voraus.

The changes in climate affected especially the Alps during the past 20,000 years. In this book more than 20 experts from different fields present the current state of climate research in Austria, starting from the last ice age until the current climate warming. In the early Holocene human activities were driven by the climate while in modern societies climate change is driven to an increasing amount by human activities. Undoubtedly the Alps where much more affected by climate change than many other regions of the world, but still the authors dare to look ahead into the future

Developing predictive models of wind damage in Austrian forests

International audienceAbstract• ContextAmong natural disturbances, wind storms cause the greatest damage to forests in Austria.• AimThe aim of this study is to quantify the effects of site, stand and meteorological attributes on the wind disturbance regime at the operational scale of forest stands.• MethodsWe used binomial generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) to quantify the probability of damage events and linear mixed models (LMMs) to explain the damage intensity at the forest stand level in four management units with a total forest area of approximately 28,800 ha.• ResultsTimber stock volume, stand age, elevation, previous disturbances, wind gust speed and frozen state of soil contributed in explaining probability of wind damage. While the model of disturbance probability correctly classified 90 % of all cases in the data set (specificity 95 %, sensitivity 26 %), the model for damage intensity explained only low percentages of the variation in the observed damage data (full model R2 = 0.38, fixed effects-only model R2 = 0.09; cross-validation in the four forest management units yielded similar R2 values).• ConclusionThe developed models indicated that decreasing the proportion of Norway spruce (Picea abies [L.] Karst), limiting stand age and reducing the timber stock in course of tending treatments in stands exposed to wind disturbance can mitigate the risk and the expected damage intensity. High gust speeds and salvage cuts after earlier damage increase the probability of further wind disturbance events