Trends in Temperature and Precipitation

Abstract

Climate change can already be detected in the behaviour of temperature and precipitation time series, especially over the recent decades. A data analysis of meteorological stations in the Upper Danube region revealed 83 sufficient out of 377 available time series covering the years 1960–2006 to calculate temperature and precipitation time series for the summer months (June, July, August) and the winter months (December, January, February). For a spatial analysis of the time series, the Upper Danube region was divided into five subregions with homogenous climates. The analysis comprises a representation analysis, a linear trend analysis and the Mann-Kendall test for determining the level of statistical significance of the calculated trends. The results showed significant increase of summer temperatures and slight increase of winter temperatures, both with high significance levels. The precipitation trends showed less significant or even negligible values and revealed both decreases and increases in both investigated seasons. Furthermore, the summer precipitation showed mostly decreasing values in the western part of the investigated area while the winter precipitation showed decreasing values in the Alps, especially in the eastern part.