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A Precipitation Climatology of the Alps from High-Resolution Rain-Gauge Observations

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A Precipitation Climatology of the Alps from High-Resolution Rain-Gauge Observations INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY Int. J. Climatol. 18: 873–900 (1998) A PRECIPITATION CLIMATOLOGY OF THE ALPS FROM HIGH-RESOLUTION RAIN-GAUGE OBSERVATIONS CHRISTOPH FREI* and CHRISTOPH SCHA8R Atmospheric Science, ETH Zu¨rich, Switzerland Recei6ed 4 February 1997 Re6ised 19 September 1997 Accepted 19 September 1997 ABSTRACT A new precipitation climatology covering the European Alps is presented. The analysis covers the entire mountain range including adjacent foreland areas and exhibits a resolution of about 25 km. It is based on observations at one of the densest rain-gauge networks over complex topography world-wide, embracing more than 6600 stations from the high-resolution networks of the Alpine countries. The climatology is determined from daily analyses of bias-uncorrected, quality controlled data for the 20 year period 1971–1990. The daily precipitation fields were produced with an advanced distance-weighting scheme commonly adopted for the analysis of precipitation on a global scale. The paper describes the baseline seasonal means derived from the daily analysis fields. The results depict the mesoscale distribution of the Alpine precipitation climate, its relations to the topography, and its seasonal cycle. Gridded analysis results are also provided in digital form. The most prominent Alpine effects include the enhancement of precipitation along the Alpine foothills, and the shielding of the inner-Alpine valleys. A detailed analysis along a section across the Alps also demonstrates that a simple precipitation–height relationship does not exist on the Alpine scale, because much of the topographic signal is associated with slope and shielding rather than height effects. Although systematic biases associated with the rain-gauge measurement and the topographic clustering of the stations are not corrected for, a qualitative validation of the results, using existing national climatologies shows good agreement on the mesoscale. Furthermore a comparison is made between the present climatology and the Alpine sections of the global climatology of Legates and Willmott and the Greater European climatology from the Climate Research Unit (University of East Anglia). Results indicate that the pattern and magnitude of analysed Alpine precipitation critically depend upon the density of available observations and the analysis procedure adopted. © 1998 Royal Meteorological Society. KEY WORDS: Alpine region; precipitation averages; rain-gauge networks; meso-climatology; mountain climate 1. INTRODUCTION Precipitation constitutes one of the most important meteorological and climatological parameters for our ecosystems and civilization. This is, in particular, the case in mountainous regions such as the Alps, which are able to extract ambient moisture from the atmosphere by various orographic precipitation mecha- nisms. In such regions, water erosion has formed our landscape, and the availability of precipitation and soil moisture is one of the prime factors that determines the vegetation cover and thus the basis of our agriculture. Also, runoff from precipitation and snow-melt in mountainous regions usually provides freshwater resources for large areas, which include the adjacent flatland neighbourhood. On the other hand, precipitation is also responsible for a range of natural disasters, ranging from flash-flooding, landslides, avalanches to serious cases of hail damage. * Correspondence to: Atmospheric Science ETH, Ho¨nggerberg HPP, CH-8093 Zu¨rich, Switzerland. E-mail: [email protected] Contract grant sponsor: Swiss Priority Programme; Contract grant number: SPP-U 5001-044602 CCC 0899–8418/98/080873–28$17.50 © 1998 Royal Meteorological Society 874 C. FREI AND C. SCHA8R It is thus not surprising that the monitoring and analysis of precipitation has always been central to mountain meteorology and climatology. Accurate knowledge of the spatial and seasonal variations of long-term mean precipitation is required for a variety of planning tasks in civil engineering, agriculture and forestry. The development of high-resolution numerical weather prediction models, and the threat of global climate change, has further increased the motivation to better observe the distribution of precipitation and understand the underlying process. For example, the investigation of the relationship between regional precipitation and large-scale flow conditions (e.g. von Storch et al., 1993), and the detection of climate trends (Widmann and Scha¨r, 1997) requires distributions of precipitation as input for statistical analyses. Again the development of numerical weather forecasting and climate models critically depends upon accurate analyses of observed precipitation for validation purposes (e.g. Hulme, 1994a; Lu¨thi et al., 1995). Yet, although recent efforts have led to global and continental-scale climatologies that are well-suited for climate dynamics and modelling studies (e.g. Arkin and Xie, 1994; Hulme et al., 1995), adequate analyses on the regional scale are often not available. For the region of the European Alpine mountain chain two categories of climatologies exist. On the one hand there are analyses for certain sectors of the Alpine region, mostly delimited by national or departmental borders, which exhibit a spatial resolution as fine as a few kilometres, and for which extensive use is made of dense rain-gauge networks (see Table I). The design of these analyses is adapted to local planning purposes, and their use for research activities in meteorological and climate research is restricted by the limited spatial extent, the lack of temporal resolution (beyond the mean seasonal cycle), and the fact that such information is commonly reproduced in climatic atlases but not accessible in digital form. On the other hand the Alpine sections from global and continental-scale precipitation analyses (e.g. Legates and Willmott, 1990; Hulme et al., 1995) embrace the entire region with a homogeneous analysis procedure, sometimes include information on interannual variability, and also can be accessed digitally. Yet, suffering from restrictions in the international data exchange (Hulme, 1994b), the observational basis Table I. Recent officially available national high-resolution charts of annual mean precipitation (some also include mean seasonal and monthly distributions). The references have been consulted for a qualitative validation of the Alpine-wide mesoscale precipitation climatology (see section 5.1). (Note that the number of stations refers to the stations used for the entire country, rather than for the part of the Alpine region) Country/region Reference Stations, period and comments Austria Steinhauser, 1953 1415, 1901–1950 Behr, 1993 ca. 1400, 1972–1990, polynomial interpolation, uniform height gradient France Direction de la ca. 1500, 1951–1980 Me´te´orologie, 1988 Direction de la ca. 1200, 1921–1950 Me´te´orologie, 1989 Germany Schirmer and ca. 4000, 1931–1960 Vent-Schmidt, 1979 Mu¨ller-Westermeier, 4121, 1951–1980, elevation detrended kriging, variable height 1995 gradient Italy Servizio Hydrographico, ca. 2400, 1921–1950 1959 Switzerland Landeshydrologie und ca. 400, 1951–1950 bias corrected data, elevation detrended Geologie, 1992 kriging, uniform height gradient Slovenia, Croatia, Rankovic, 1980 1931–1960 Dinaric ridge Kari-Krei, 1991 1951–1980 Vosges and Reklib, 1995 1951–1980, kriging, regression with multiple parameters of Schwarzwald regional topography © 1998 Royal Meteorological Society Int. J. Climatol. 18: 873–900 (1998) ALPS PRECIPITATION CLIMATOLOGY 875 Figure 1. Observing sites of the SYNOP network in the Alpine region. Observations from these stations are subject to an international data exchange via the global telecommunication system. The poor spatial resolution should be compared with the density of Alpine rain-gauge networks displayed in Figure 3 is rather limited. Often the underlying station sample is similar to that of the conventional SYNOP network (cf. Figure 1) and this seriously limits the spatial resolution and expected accuracy of such analyses. An extensive observational basis appears, in particular, essential over complex terrain such as the Alps, where the representativity of point measurements is very limited. Although it has not been the prevalent perspective so far, viewing the mountain range as a whole was not completely uncommon in the history of Alpine precipitation climatology. Some of the Alpine-wide analyses have even established new climatological concepts and significantly influenced the research on mountain meteorology. For example Raulin (1879) in his early study ‘U8ber die Vertheilung des Regens im Alpengebiet 6on Wien bis Marseille’ demonstrated the regional variability of the seasonal precipitation cycle and this was one of the first comprehensive studies to recognise the various climatic ‘spheres’ influencing the region. Raulin’s study comprised multiyear data series at a notable 249 observing sites (station spacing around 40 km), which he assembled from printed reports. Again, interested in a climatic regionalization, Knoch and Reichel (1930) have exploited long-term monthly averages at 412 stations across the Alps. Their study was one of the earliest to take into account the uncertainty of observations due to the measurement bias of rain-gauges. Later, in his pioneering isohyetal analysis, Ekhart (1948) was able to characterize the Alpine precipitation climate in terms of two wet zones along the northern and southern slopes and drier conditions in the Alpine valleys. These findings, were confirmed
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