Climate, Air Pollutants, and Wet Deposition

Abstract

One main topic of scientific and public interest regarding the Waldstein research site continues to be the high-quality observation of weather and air quality that captures the meteorology and climate of this particular site and the neighboring regions. Based on meteorological measurements made at the Waldstein facility from 1994 to the present, several studies—mainly of air temperature, precipitation, fog, wet deposition, and air pollutants—were conducted over the last 20 years. The expected strong global rise of earth’s basic air temperature will have a more moderated magnitude in Franconia, but the already continental location within the Central European climate zones, in combination with a heterogeneous landscape with imposed local orographic wind systems, will increase and reinforce diurnal and seasonal amplitudes and spatial variety of basic meteorological and air chemical elements and induce a higher risk of local extreme weather (climate) or smog (ozone) events. Forced by the change of macro- and mesoscale atmospheric circulation patterns across the northern hemisphere, the frequency and intensity of such weather-changing situations have increased during the last three or four decades in parallel with the span and the unpredictability of extreme weather conditions. That has, and will continue to have, an adjustment effect on air temperature and air humidity, sunshine duration and air pollution, wind (storm), date and duration of precipitation, and wet deposition of nitrogen, sulfur, salts, and metals and therefore a strong impact to the ecosystems at Waldstein.

J. Lüers and T. Wrzesinsky: Affiliation during the work at the Waldstein sites before 2005–University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth Institute of Terrestrial Ecosystem Research (BITÖK), Department of Climatology, Germany

J. Lüers, B. Grasse, and T. Foken: Affiliation during the work at the Waldstein sites–University of Bayreuth, Department of Micrometeorology, Germany