In: Regional Environmental Change, 2000, vol. 1(2), p. 70
Climate change has in the past led to shifts in vegetation patterns; in a future, warmer climate due to enhanced greenhouse-gas concentrations, vegetation is also likely to be highly responsive to such warming. Mountain regions are considered to be particularly sensitive to such changes. In this paper we present an approach to assess the impact of climate change on long-term vegetation plots...
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In: Climate Dynamics, 2001, vol. 18(1-2), p. 145
The windstorm VIVIAN that severely affected Switzerland in February 1990 has been investigated using the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM). This winter storm was characterised by a deep cyclone in the North Atlantic and by strong geopotential and baroclinic north-south gradients in the troposphere over Western Europe resulting in high windspeeds in Switzerland. Our principal emphasis is to...
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In: International Journal of Climatology, 2002, vol. 22(4), p. 485
The nowcasting and prediction of strong winds are still far from adequate, using either statistical or numerical modelling approaches. During the last decade, Switzerland has been struck by two extratropical storms, namely the February 1990 storm Vivian, and the December 1999 storm Lothar, that caused severe damage to infrastructure and to forests. Although numerical weather prediction models...
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In: Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 2002, vol. 71(1-2), p. 29
An investigation has been undertaken to assess the manner in which the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) influences average, climatic conditions, and also extremes of dynamic and thermodynamic variables. By choosing representative sites in the Swiss Alps, the present study shows that there is a high sensitivity of the extremes of the probability density functions of temperature, moisture and...
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In: Swiss Medical Weekly, 2002, vol. 25-26, p. 329
This paper addresses a number of problems relating climatic change and human health. Following an introduction that outlines the over-arching issues, a short summary is given on climatic change and its anthropogenic causes. The rest of the paper then focuses on the direct and indirect impacts of global climatic change on health. Direct effects comprise changes in the hygrothermal stress response...
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In: Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 2002, vol. 73(3-4), p. 133-150
A study has been conducted to assess the reasons for a significant decrease in the astronomic observing period since the Very Large Telescope of ESO (the European Southern Observatory) went into operation in 1998. Following a multi-year monitoring of meteorological parameters at the site of the ESO telescope in Paranal (northern Chile), the optimal climatic conditions observed there prior to the...
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In: Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 2003, vol. 74, no. 1-2, p. 19-31
In many instances, snow cover and duration are a major controlling factor on a range of environmental systems in mountain regions. When assessing the impacts of climatic change on mountain ecosystems and river basins whose origin lie in the Alps, one of the key controls on such systems will reside in changes in snow amount and duration. At present, regional climate models or statistical...
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In: Climatic Change, 2004, vol. 65, p. 11
The Earth's climate system is highly nonlinear: inputs and outputs are not proportional, change is often episodic and abrupt, rather than slow and gradual, and multiple equilibria are the norm. While this is widely accepted, there is a relatively poor understanding of the different types of nonlinearities, how they manifest under various conditions, and whether they reflect a climate system...
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In: Geophysical Research Letters, 2005, vol. 32, p. L01812
Investigations conducted for several Swiss mountain climatological sites, and in particular the Saentis high mountain site at 2,500 m above sea level, show that positive temperature anomalies during the winter season currently exceed those of all other seasons. These “heat waves” exhibit daily maximum temperature anomalies sometimes in excess of 16°C, and are observed to have increased...
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