Long-term changes of plant phenological phases determined by complex interactions of environmental factors are in the focus of recent climate impact research. There is a lack of studies on the comparison of biogeographical regions in Europe in terms of plant responses to climate. We examined the flowering phenology of plant species to identify the spatio-temporal patterns in their responses to environmental variables over the period 1970-2010. Data were collected from 12 countries along a 3000-km-long, North-South transect from northern to eastern Central Europe.Biogeographical regions of Europe were covered from Finland to Macedonia. Robust statistical methods were used to determine the most influential factors driving the changes of the beginning of flowering dates. Significant species-specific advancements in plant flowering onsets within the Continental (3 to 8.3 days), Alpine (2 to 3.8 days) and by highest magnitude in the Boreal biogeographical regions (2.2 to 9.6 days per decades) were found, while less pronounced responses were detected in the Pannonian and Mediterranean regions. While most of the other studies only use mean temperature in the models, we show that also the distribution of minimum and maximum temperatures are reasonable to consider as explanatory variable. Not just local (e.g. temperature) but large scale (e.g. North Atlantic Oscillation) climate factors, as well as altitude and latitude play significant role in the timing of flowering across biogeographical regions of Europe. Our analysis gave evidences that species show a delay in the timing of flowering with an increase in latitude (between the geographical coordinates of 40.9 and 67.9), and an advance with changing climate. The woody species (black locust and small-leaved lime) showed stronger advancements in their timing of flowering than the herbaceous species (dandelion, lily of the valley). In later decades (1991-2010), more pronounced phenological change was detected than during the earlier years (1970-1990), which indicates the increased influence of human induced higher spring temperatures in the late twentieth century.
Extreme heat poses significant risks to the world's growing urban population, and the heat stress to human health is likely to escalate with the anthropogenically increased temperatures projected by climate models. Thus, the additional heat from the urban heat island (UHI) effect needs to be quantified, including the spatial pattern. This study focuses on the city of Valencia (Spain), investigating the intensity and spatial pattern of UHI during three consecutive hot summer days accompanying a heat record. For the analysis, long-term in situ measurements and remote sensing data were combined. The UHI effect was evaluated using two approaches: (a) based on air temperature (AT) time-series from two meteorological stations and (b) using land surface temperature (LST) images from MODIS products by NASA with 1 km resolution. The strongest nighttime UHI estimated from AT was 2.3 • C, while the most intense surface UHI calculated as the difference between the LST of urban and rural regions (defined by NDVI) was 2.6 • C-both measured during the night after the record hot day. To assess the human thermal comfort in the city the Discomfort Index was applied. With the increasing number of tropical nights, the mitigation of nighttime UHI is a pressing issue that should be taken into consideration in climate-resilient urban planning.
Abstract. Eco-climatological studies recognise plant phenophases as high-confident climate indicators, since they are strongly dependent on heat conditions. We investigated the first flowering response of numerous plant species to inter-annual fluctuation of seasonal temperatures (e.g., heat sensitivity of the phenophase), also the rate of these species-specific sensitivities in order to test their applicability as proxy. From the few available data sources recorded in the Carpathian Basin during the 19th century, the first flowering data sets of 16 plant species and time series of monthly mean temperature (site: Hermannstadt; period: 1851-1891), furthermore the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) were selected for the analysis. We found that the first flowering dates of different plants fluctuated significantly synchronously, however, temporal trends were not detected in any of the time series. Based on the main heat sensitivity characteristics the species were ranked as phyto-thermometers to select the best heat indicator plants. The first flowering data of these indicators were applicable to estimate temperature data. The accuracy of different plants as proxies varied in the range of 1.0 °C and 1.5 °C. Therefore our procedure is of interest in order to better understand past climates of periods at locations where no instrumental records are available.
<p>As basis of climate change adaptation, good quality climate data and information is required, however, they are very often costly or difficult to access. The Climate Data Store (CDS) developed within Copernicus Climate Change Service aims to bridge the gap between data providers and users by ensuring a freely available, quality-assured information about the past, present and future climate. In order to make users familiar with the CDS, a national training event was organized in Hungary that contained two online webinars and a face-to-face workshop (October 2019). Researchers, lecturers, consultants and stakeholders from the field of agriculture, forestry, water management and environmental engineering have learned how climate data can be properly selected, analyzed and interpreted to address their climate change adaptation challenges. For their own adaptation case studies they tested the applicability of CDS and discussed the experiences in multidisciplinary teams.</p><p>Main feedbacks of the participants are:</p><ul><li>The concept of CDS is welcome and relevant to their work. Provided climate variables are easily accessible and well documented.</li> <li>For sectoral application, the country specific adaptation issues would require high spatial resolution (regional and local scale time series) and bias corrected model results instead of the currently available GCM outputs.</li> <li>The Toolbox associated with the CDS should be more user friendly. At the moment (October 2019) high programming skills are essential to derive praxis-based extreme indices and create country-scale maps and graphs.</li> <li>The e-learning material on the Learning Experience Platform contains carefully structured background knowledge to the sources, characteristics and proper application of climate data.</li> </ul><p>Further toolbox improvements driven by the user needs and the ongoing development of Sectoral Information Systems will significantly increase the applicability of the CDS for climate risk analyses and adaptation support in Hungary.</p><p>&#160;</p><p>Acknowledgements: the training event was supported by the European Union Copernicus Climate Change Service and the Hungarian Meteorological Service.</p>
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