Reflections of global warming in trends of temperature characteristics in the Czech Republic, 1961–2019

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive trend analysis of spatiotemporal temperature change patterns over the territory of what is now the Czech Republic (CR) during the 1961–2019 period. Employing daily mean temperatures (TAVG), maximum (TMAX) and minimum (TMIN) temperatures and diurnal temperature range (DTR), supplied by 133 stations of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, daily, monthly, seasonal and annual series were calculated for four altitudinal groups and the entire CR, for which linear trends were calculated and further analysed. For the purposes of relative trend comparison, the linear trends were also calculated from standardized series (mean 0, SD 1, in 1961–1990). All seasonal and annual TAVG, TMAX and TMIN series exhibit statistically significant increasing trends, with the exceptions of only a few cases for winter (DJF) and autumn (SON). DTR trends increase significantly in spring (MAM) and summer (JJA), but decrease in DJF and SON. The highest increases in trends occur in JJA and from stations at lower altitudes for groups I (up to 300 m asl) and II (301–600 m asl). Trends in JJA and SON TMIN are relatively higher than in TMAX, while the opposite holds true of DJF and MAM. Comparing the three decades after 1990 with the 1961–1990 normal, each decade was generally warmer than the previous period, with particularly enhanced warming in 2011–2019. This is also reflected in prominent increases in cumulative temperature sums throughout the year. The results obtained are discussed in the context of other European papers and with respect to explaining existing differences.

The spread of Colletes hederae Schmidt & Westrich, 1993 continues – first records of this plasterer bee species from Slovakia and the Czech Republic

“…It is quite surprising that the species was only discovered in the south of Slovakia (Bratislava is only about 50 km from Vienna) after such a long time – 11 years later and in Mikulov (80 km from Vienna) 14 years later. Perhaps, the weather conditions for spreading ( Frommer 2010 ) were more suitable in the last few seasons, which were exceptionally warm in both winter and summer in Central Europe ( Zahradníček et al 2021 ). Spreading to Znojmo could be more difficult, whilst the species was recorded nearby in Austria, around Linz, but much later than in Vienna ( Ebmer et al 2018 ).…”

Soil drought and circulation types in a longitudinal transect over central Europe

“…These results tally closely with the results of Zahradníček et al . (2020), who analysed linear temperature trends in the Czech Republic for the same 1961–2019 period. Although their trends are slightly higher in the summer half‐year, this difference cannot explain the significant difference in soil‐drought trends between the two half‐years indicated in Table 3.…”

Fatalities associated with the severe weather conditions in the Czech Republic, 2000–2019

“…Newspaper reports have served as a vital source in the creation of databases of weatherrelated fatalities to the point that the approach has become quite common practice. They have been used, for example, for Switzerland (Hilker et al, 2009), Portugal (Zêzere et al, 2014), southern France (Vinet et al, 2016), Calabria in southern Italy (Aceto et al, 2017;Petrucci et al, 2018), andMallorca (Grimalt-Gelabert et al, 2020). The results of working with Czech newspaper data over a 20-year period may be influenced by the profound changes in society, both in the media market and in internal changes in the actual newspaper employed.…”

“…Studies of flood-related fatalities, sometimes linked with those associated with landslides, tend to focus on southern Europe and the Mediterranean (e.g. Zêzere et al, 2014;Diakakis, 2016;Pereira et al, 2016Pereira et al, , 2017Diakakis and Deligiannakis, 2017;Salvati et al, 2018;Vinet et al, 2019;Grimalt-Gelabert et al, 2020), although similar studies exist also in other countries (e.g. Hilker et al, 2009, for Switzerland andŠpitalar et al, 2020, for Slovenia).…”