Frei Schaer 1998

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY Int. J. Climatol.
18: 873900 (1998)
A PRECIPITATION CLIMATOLOGY OF THE ALPS FROM HIGH-RESOLUTION RAIN-GAUGE OBSERVATIONS

8R CHRISTOPH FREI* and CHRISTOPH SCHA Atmospheric Science, ETH Zu rich, Switzerland Recei6ed 4 February 1997 Re6ised 19 September 1997 Accepted 19 September 1997
ABSTRACT A new precipitation climatology covering the European Alps is presented. The analysis covers the entire mountain range including adjacent foreland areas and exhibits a resolution of about 25 km. It is based on observations at one of the densest rain-gauge networks over complex topography world-wide, embracing more than 6600 stations from the high-resolution networks of the Alpine countries. The climatology is determined from daily analyses of bias-uncorrected, quality controlled data for the 20 year period 1971 1990. The daily precipitation elds were produced with an advanced distance-weighting scheme commonly adopted for the analysis of precipitation on a global scale. The paper describes the baseline seasonal means derived from the daily analysis elds. The results depict the mesoscale distribution of the Alpine precipitation climate, its relations to the topography, and its seasonal cycle. Gridded analysis results are also provided in digital form. The most prominent Alpine effects include the enhancement of precipitation along the Alpine foothills, and the shielding of the inner-Alpine valleys. A detailed analysis along a section across the Alps also demonstrates that a simple precipitationheight relationship does not exist on the Alpine scale, because much of the topographic signal is associated with slope and shielding rather than height effects. Although systematic biases associated with the rain-gauge measurement and the topographic clustering of the stations are not corrected for, a qualitative validation of the results, using existing national climatologies shows good agreement on the mesoscale. Furthermore a comparison is made between the present climatology and the Alpine sections of the global climatology of Legates and Willmott and the Greater European climatology from the Climate Research Unit (University of East Anglia). Results indicate that the pattern and magnitude of analysed Alpine precipitation critically depend upon the density of available observations and the analysis procedure adopted. 1998 Royal Meteorological Society.
KEY WORDS: Alpine
region; precipitation averages; rain-gauge networks; meso-climatology; mountain climate
1. INTRODUCTION Precipitation constitutes one of the most important meteorological and climatological parameters for our ecosystems and civilization. This is, in particular, the case in mountainous regions such as the Alps, which are able to extract ambient moisture from the atmosphere by various orographic precipitation mechanisms. In such regions, water erosion has formed our landscape, and the availability of precipitation and soil moisture is one of the prime factors that determines the vegetation cover and thus the basis of our agriculture. Also, runoff from precipitation and snow-melt in mountainous regions usually provides freshwater resources for large areas, which include the adjacent atland neighbourhood. On the other hand, precipitation is also responsible for a range of natural disasters, ranging from ash-ooding, landslides, avalanches to serious cases of hail damage.
* Correspondence to: Atmospheric frei@atmos.umnw.ethz.ch Science ETH, Ho nggerberg HPP, CH-8093 Zu rich, Switzerland. E-mail:
Contract grant sponsor: Swiss Priority Programme; Contract grant number: SPP-U 5001-044602
CCC 08998418/98/080873 28$17.50 1998 Royal Meteorological Society
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8R C. FREI AND C. SCHA
It is thus not surprising that the monitoring and analysis of precipitation has always been central to mountain meteorology and climatology. Accurate knowledge of the spatial and seasonal variations of long-term mean precipitation is required for a variety of planning tasks in civil engineering, agriculture and forestry. The development of high-resolution numerical weather prediction models, and the threat of global climate change, has further increased the motivation to better observe the distribution of precipitation and understand the underlying process. For example, the investigation of the relationship between regional precipitation and large-scale ow conditions (e.g. von Storch et al., 1993), and the detection of climate trends (Widmann and Scha r, 1997) requires distributions of precipitation as input for statistical analyses. Again the development of numerical weather forecasting and climate models critically depends upon accurate analyses of observed precipitation for validation purposes (e.g. Hulme, 1994a; Lu thi et al., 1995). Yet, although recent efforts have led to global and continental-scale climatologies that are well-suited for climate dynamics and modelling studies (e.g. Arkin and Xie, 1994; Hulme et al., 1995), adequate analyses on the regional scale are often not available. For the region of the European Alpine mountain chain two categories of climatologies exist. On the one hand there are analyses for certain sectors of the Alpine region, mostly delimited by national or departmental borders, which exhibit a spatial resolution as ne as a few kilometres, and for which extensive use is made of dense rain-gauge networks (see Table I). The design of these analyses is adapted to local planning purposes, and their use for research activities in meteorological and climate research is restricted by the limited spatial extent, the lack of temporal resolution (beyond the mean seasonal cycle), and the fact that such information is commonly reproduced in climatic atlases but not accessible in digital form. On the other hand the Alpine sections from global and continental-scale precipitation analyses (e.g. Legates and Willmott, 1990; Hulme et al., 1995) embrace the entire region with a homogeneous analysis procedure, sometimes include information on interannual variability, and also can be accessed digitally. Yet, suffering from restrictions in the international data exchange (Hulme, 1994b), the observational basis
Table I. Recent ofcially available national high-resolution charts of annual mean precipitation (some also include mean seasonal and monthly distributions). The references have been consulted for a qualitative validation of the Alpine-wide mesoscale precipitation climatology (see section 5.1). (Note that the number of stations refers to the stations used for the entire country, rather than for the part of the Alpine region) Country/region Austria Reference Steinhauser, 1953 Behr, 1993 Direction de la Me te orologie, 1988 Direction de la Me te orologie, 1989 Schirmer and Vent-Schmidt, 1979 Mu ller-Westermeier, 1995 Servizio Hydrographico, 1959 Landeshydrologie und Geologie, 1992 Rankovic, 1980 Kari-Krei, 1991 Reklib, 1995 Stations, period and comments 1415, 1901 1950 ca. 1400, 1972 1990, polynomial interpolation, uniform height gradient ca. 1500, 1951 1980 ca. 1200, 1921 1950 ca. 4000, 1931 1960 4121, 1951 1980, elevation detrended kriging, variable height gradient ca. 2400, 1921 1950 ca. 400, 1951 1950 bias corrected data, elevation detrended kriging, uniform height gradient 1931 1960 1951 1980 1951 1980, kriging, regression with multiple parameters of regional topography
Int. J. Climatol. 18: 873 900 (1998)
France
Germany
Italy Switzerland Slovenia, Croatia, Dinaric ridge Vosges and Schwarzwald
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Figure 1. Observing sites of the SYNOP network in the Alpine region. Observations from these stations are subject to an international data exchange via the global telecommunication system. The poor spatial resolution should be compared with the density of Alpine rain-gauge networks displayed in Figure 3
is rather limited. Often the underlying station sample is similar to that of the conventional SYNOP network (cf. Figure 1) and this seriously limits the spatial resolution and expected accuracy of such analyses. An extensive observational basis appears, in particular, essential over complex terrain such as the Alps, where the representativity of point measurements is very limited. Although it has not been the prevalent perspective so far, viewing the mountain range as a whole was not completely uncommon in the history of Alpine precipitation climatology. Some of the Alpine-wide analyses have even established new climatological concepts and signicantly inuenced the research on 8 ber die Vertheilung des Regens im mountain meteorology. For example Raulin (1879) in his early study U Alpengebiet 6on Wien bis Marseille demonstrated the regional variability of the seasonal precipitation cycle and this was one of the rst comprehensive studies to recognise the various climatic spheres inuencing the region. Raulins study comprised multiyear data series at a notable 249 observing sites (station spacing around 40 km), which he assembled from printed reports. Again, interested in a climatic regionalization, Knoch and Reichel (1930) have exploited long-term monthly averages at 412 stations across the Alps. Their study was one of the earliest to take into account the uncertainty of observations due to the measurement bias of rain-gauges. Later, in his pioneering isohyetal analysis, Ekhart (1948) was able to characterize the Alpine precipitation climate in terms of two wet zones along the northern and southern slopes and drier conditions in the Alpine valleys. These ndings, were conrmed by the seminal studies of Kubat (1972) and Fliri (1974), who together assembled an impressive data base of monthly time-series (1931 1960) from more than 1000 stations between Mont Blanc und Hohen Tauern all collected from printed publications. For some of the stations even daily totals were manually digitized and this led to a synoptic climatology of Alpine rainfall variability (Fliri and Schu epp, 1983; Fliri, 1986). In fact Fliris analysis is still widely used as a reference today, because it is the most recent Alpine-wide climatology derived directly from high-resolution rain-gauge data. Any further improvements require the consideration of the full network and hence for practical reasonsdigital access to the data. As an alternative, Baumgartner et al. (1983) combined existing national climatological maps into a composite map of mean annual precipitation. As alluded to above, the currently existing climatologies cannot provide together the full spatial coverage of the Alpine region and/or the temporal variability down to a daily resolution, as is needed for studies on regional climate dynamics, mesoscale meteorology, and high-resolution model validation. Thus there is a pressing need for a new climatology that makes use of as many of the available rain-gauge observations as possible. In this article we present a new Alpine precipitation climatology. The analysis
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covers the entire region of the Alpine range including a broad ribbon of its adjacent foreland. With respect to the spatial resolution (about 25 km) this climatology is intermediate to the two categories mentioned above, and appropriate to resolve precipitation signals from various topographically controlled mesoscale atmospheric processes (see Bergeron, 1968; Browning et al., 1974; Smith, 1979; Banta, 1990; Scha r et al., 1997). Use is made of an extensive observational data base, which consists of time-series with daily rain-gauge totals at more than 6600 stations during the 20 year period 19711990. The spatial analysis is performed on a daily basis, resulting in a long-term data base of daily mesoscale precipitation elds. In the current paper we describe the data base, the quality control and analysis procedures, and discuss the baseline mean seasonal climatology as deduced from the daily precipitation elds. In subsequent studies we will use the data base for further analysis on the frequency distribution of daily precipitation totals (for some preliminary results, see Frei, 1995). With a typical station spacing around 10 km the Alpine rain-gauge system constitutes one of the densest in situ observing systems over a mountain range of its size in the world. The various regional networks belong to and are operated by governmental and regional agencies (meteorological and hydrological services), which are also responsible for archiving the data (e.g. Mu ller and Joss, 1985; Weingartner, 1992). The majority of the rain-gauges are still operated manually by spare-time observers, yet in recent years subnets were equipped with automatically recording instruments (e.g. Gutermann, 1986). The high costs of such extensive measurements and the awareness of their economic value has obstructed the exchange of data for research purposes, and constitutes one of the main obstacles for the establishment of Alpine-wide climatologies. The regular exchange of weather data via the Global Telecommunication System (GTS) is conned to selected stations the so-called SYNOP networkwhich has a poor spatial resolution (cf. Figure 1). For the present climatology we have made large efforts to obtain access to data from the high-resolution networks of the Alpine countries. In most cases extensive negotiations were necessary to establish the condence of the data providers. The establishment of an international Alpine research programme (MAP; Binder and Scha r, 1995), which circumstantially was initiated at the time of these negotiations, helped to support the awareness about the scientic needs for high-resolution observational data, and to build the relevant contacts. Access could be granted by most of the data centres contacted through contracts regulating the non-distribution of the raw data, and the purely scientic purpose of its use. Some of the centres also charged a fee for the expenses of the extraction and transfer of the data. A nal effort was then made by integrating the numerous data portions into a homogeneous data format. The resulting data base allows us to produce an Alpine-wide climatology with the densest data coverage available at present. The structure of the paper is as follows: section 2 introduces the analysis domain and the characteristics of the Alpine-wide rain-gauge data set. The analysis procedure is then presented in section 3 together with a discussion of the error sources. Results for the annual and seasonal mean distributions are discussed in section 4. Comparisons of these elds with climatologies from other studies (i.e. regional high-resolution maps and the Alpine sectors from global/continental analyses) are detailed in section 5. Possible applications and extensions of this work are briey sketched in the concluding section 6. 2. STUDY DOMAIN AND ALPINE DATA SET
2.1. Domain and topography

Figure 2(a) shows a physiographic map of the domain utilized for this climatological analysis. It is dened as a latitude by longitude window (217E, 4349N). In the westeast direction it has a horizontal scale of about 1200 km and extends from central France across Switzerland to eastern Austria. In the northsouth direction the domain measures about 700 km and ranges from the Ligurian- and the Adriatic coasts to southern Germany. To the north and east of the Adriatic Sea, the domain also comprises parts of the territories of Slovenia, Croatia and BosniaHerzegovina.
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The arc-shaped mountain range of the European Alps constitutes the major topographic feature within the analysis domain. It has an average ridge height of about 2500 m, a length of 800 km and a mean width of about 200 km. The ridge is intersected by a series of major valleys, dividing the range into numerous mountain massifs. Most of the valleys run northwards or southwards on to the foreland, but a few prominent valleys, such as the Valais and the Inn valleys, are aligned along the main ridge over many tens of kilometres. Figure 2(b) depicts the location and local names of some main geographical features, which will be referred to later in the text.
Figure 2. (a) Physiographic map of the European Alps and the surrounding foreland area. The window displayed corresponds to the analysis domain of the climatology. (b) Location of major geographic features labelled with terms referred to in the text 1998 Royal Meteorological Society Int. J. Climatol. 18: 873 900 (1998)
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Table II. Components of the Alpine rain-gauge data set. Listed are the time periods covered by the respective data sets (time period), the total number of time-series available within the analysis domain (station total), and the average number of quality proofed observations available per day (station average). Eventual quality testing performed by the data provider is indicated Data set: region covered (data source) Time period Stations Total AU: Austria (Hydrogr. Zentralbu ro and ZAMG, Wien) CH: Switzerland (Schweiz. Meteorolog. Anstalt, Zu rich) DL: Southern Germany (Deutscher Wetterdienst, Offenbach a.M.) RO: South-eastern France (Me te o-France, Toulouse) IT: Northern Italy (Servizio Idrograco e Mareograco Nazionale, Roma) UC: Northern Italy (Ufcio Centrale Ecologia Agraria, Roma) SY: Northern Italy and BosniaHerzegovina (SYNOP data, Seewetteramt, Hamburg) CR: Croatia (Meterol. and Hydrol. Service, Zagreb) SL: Slovenia (Hydrometeorological Institute, Ljubljana) Alpine region (data set version 4.0, combined from above components) 1971 1900 1971 1990 1971 1990 1971 1990 1971 1986 (1987 1990) 1971 1990 1977 1990 1971 1990 1971 1990 1971 1990 1102 627 1000 3009 557 (48) 71 81 163 68 6678 Average 902 491 847 1997 446 (46) 45 48 118 62 4956 Partly (status 1/95) Yes Yes, spatial consistency Yes, after 1972 Partly Range test only No Partly Partly Range test, spatial consistency Quality control
The analysis domain also comprises a typically 300 km wide belt of atter terrain adjacent to the main Alpine body. In general the Alpine foreland is characterized by smoothly undulating or at terrain, intersected by several smaller scale hill ranges, which divide the area into interconnected plains and river basins. Some of the smaller scale topographic features of the Alpine foreland are readily resolved with the grid-spacing of the climatological analysis (about 25 km). These are the Swiss Middleland, the Jura Mountains (France and north-western Switzerland), the Schwarzwald (south-western Germany), the Vosges hill (eastern France), the Dalmatian range (along the eastern Adriatic coast), the Appennino (Italian peninsula) and the Massif Central (France).
2.2. The precipitation data set

The basis for this climatological analysis is a data set of daily rain-gauge observations with high spatial resolution over most of the Alpine region. It was established by combining several sectorial data sets that have been archived by governmental weather services and hydrological agencies. Our aim was to make the best possible use of all available existing networks. Upon request, most of the data centres that were contacted have kindly provided an extensive portion of their data for our research. The nine components of the data set each comprise time series from stations located within the national boundaries of some Alpine countries. Table II lists the individual data sets and indicates the respective regions and time-periods, and the number of rain-gauge series. Originally our requests were made for data between 1966 and 1992. An optimal coverage in the combined data set was achieved for the 20 years 19711990, which was then chosen as the reference period. The spatial distribution of rain-gauge stations from which observations are available during the reference period is shown in Figure 3. For the national territories of Austria, France (south of 49N and east of 2E), Germany (south of 49N) and Switzerland, data could be obtained from the Austrian Hydrographical Ofce, Me te o-France, the German Weather Service and the Swiss Meteorological Agency, respectively. (Note that parts of the
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Figure 3. Location of all observing stations from which rain-gauge time-series are used for the climatological analyses
networks are operated by institutions other than the data provider.) These data sets (referred to as AU, RO, DL and CH) cover the entire reference period and together comprise observations at several thousands of stations (see Table II). This results in an exceptional data coverage over the western, northern and eastern sections of the analysis domain, with a typical station spacing as close as 10 km (see Figure 3). During the reference period some stations have been closed and others newly opened, such that the average number of daily reports is lower than the total number of stations (a6erage and total columns in Table II). The station density in the four data sets, however, exhibits only slight variations in time (see Figure 4).
Figure 4. Evolution of the number of daily observations (yearly average) available in the various component data sets (see Table II) 1998 Royal Meteorological Society Int. J. Climatol. 18: 873 900 (1998)
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It was necessary to include data sets from several providers for the northern Italian region. The main contribution stems from the Italian National Hydrological Service (Servizio Idrograco e Mareograco Nazionale), which has recently supported by a working group of Italian climatologists and hydrologistsinitiated a central data base for the Italian Alpine region, and released part of their time series for the present climatological study (IT, see Table II). With this component a dense spatial coverage is achieved over north-eastern Italy and parts of the Appennino hill range (Figure 3), although some areas of the western and central Po valley exhibit lower station density. Most of the observational records from the IT data set currently available to us end in 1986 (except for 48 records of the northern Appennino, see Figure 4). The spatial and temporal gaps could partly be compensated with the inclusion of two additional contributions (UC: UCEA, Rome; SY: SYNOP network), both of which, however, exhibit a signicantly lower resolution than IT. The SY data set was retrieved from original SYNOP reports collected by the Seewetteramt Hamburg, and was available for the subperiod 19781990. Together the three datasets provide a spatial coverage which is, at least regionally, comparable to the northern parts of the study domain for the rst 16 years of the reference period, but signicantly poorer for the nal 4 years. The main contributions for the south-eastern part of the Alpine region have been obtained from the Meteorological and Hydrological Service in Zagreb (CR) and the Slovenian Hydrometeorological Institute in Ljubljana (SL). Together these networks comprise rain-gauges over the Julian Alps, along the Adriatic east coast and the northern sector of the Dalmatian hill range (Figure 3). Although less dense than over the northern and western portions of the Alps, the networks are much better than SYNOP coverage, especially after 1980 when the number of Croatian stations has signicantly increased (see Figure 4). For the Southern Dinaric Alps (territory of BosniaHerzegovina) the analysis is based on 12 time-series from the above mentioned SY data set (see Table II). The resulting aggregated database covers the entire Alpine mountain ridge, including its foreland regions. The actual version (referred to as version 4.0) comprises time-series from a total of more than 6600 rain-gauge stations, with typically 5000 daily reports for a particular day of the reference period. There is still considerable inhomogeneity in the spatial coverage across the domain, particularly for the years after 1986, and this will be accounted for by using an analysis scheme with a regionally variable spatial resolution (see section 3). During the interpretation of the climatological results it will be important to bare in mind the variable density of the observational basis. Between some of the networks and even between individual stations there are notable differences in the observing practices. For example, various types of rain-gauges are simultaneously in operation: in Austria, Germany and Switzerland various types of the Hellmann rain-gauge are widely in use, whereas in France a cone-shaped model (Pluviome ` tre SPIEA) is very common. During the last decade additional instruments suited for automated operation were adopted in most countries. Technical specications of rain-gauges used in the Alpine region can be found, for example, in Blumer (1994) and in Champeaux and Tamburini (1995). Differences also pertain with regard to the daily reading times: readings at 07:00 CET (AU, CR, DL, RO, SL, SY), at 07:30 (CH) and at 09:00 (UC, IT) are common. Inconsistencies emerging from the use of different gauge types and daily reading times were ignored in the spatial analysis and the climatological results described in this paper.
2.3. Quality control

The data sets obtained from the various data centres exhibit variable quality status (see Table II). Whereas at least part of the series from the high-resolution networks were thoroughly controlled by the data providers, the SYNOP data (SY) for Northern Italy and the Southern Dinaric Alps constitute unproved raw data. The poor data quality of SYNOP precipitation reports due to typing, transmission and coding errors is well known (Schneider et al., 1992). Again our own experience shows that the declaration of missing observations is not handled properly everywhere. In some of the original data sets, time series with dry reports over several months have been detected, which apparently should have been indicated as measurement failure.
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In order to exclude the most obvious errors from the Alpine data set, a quality control procedure was applied to all the daily observations prior to their spatial analysis. For this purpose we used a simple range test and a spatial consistency test. Daily reports queried by the quality testing were then simply dropped and no attempt was made to estimate appropriate replacements. The range test lters from the data set reports larger than an upper limit of 300 mm per day. Although observations exceeding such an amount have been observed in the Alpine region in extreme cases (e.g. Lauscher, 1971; Jacq, 1994), their numerous occurrences in the SY data set (typically 30 per year!) are mostly bogus reports. Other data sets, such as the complementary Italian data set, UC (see Table I), have already been screened with a similar threshold by the data providers. The range test was only applied to unproved components of the Alpine data set. For the spatial consistency testing we adopted, with minor modications, a procedure that is operational at the German Weather Service (Behrendt, 1992). Each daily report is veried against some tolerance bounds derived from neighbouring stations. These tolerance bounds depend upon both the long-term monthly mean and the daily value at the stations under consideration. The consideration of monthly means allows systematic anomalies to be taken into account, for example, exposure of the stations. In a modication of the standard procedure, the tolerance bounds used in our study also depend upon the proximity of surrounding observations, in order to cope with the variable network density. The testing procedure deals separately with cases of isolated precipitation surrounded by dry reports, and cases of isolated dryness surrounded by rainy reports. Whereas for the unproved SY-dataset (SYNOP-reports) about 0.8% of the original data was rejected. The rejection rate was less than 0.05% for the high-resolution data sets. Thus, there is no signicant reduction in the data amount, and the a6erage station numbers listed in Table II also hold for the quality proved data sets.
3. ANALYSIS PROCEDURE The elds of the Alpine precipitation climatology are derived by spatial analysis of the irregularly distributed station data on to a regular grid specied by latitude and longitude circles. The grid spacing is 0.3 and 0.22 in the west east and north south directions, respectively, and corresponds to a mesh size of about 24 km. The basis for the mean monthly and annual precipitation (section 4) are primary daily analyses, calculated for each day of the reference period (19711990) from quality proved station data. In comparison with the direct griding of station means, this procedure allows the optimal use of observations from stations that exhibit a high rate of missing reports. The analysis scheme is designed to calculate local area means from a set of station values in the neighbourhood of the analysis grid-points. The following subsections describe the analysis scheme and discuss the possible sources of error for the resulting climatological elds.
3.1. Spatial analysis scheme

The spatial analysis of station data on the regular grid is undertaken with a modied version of the SYMAP interpolation algorithm of Shepard (1968, 1984). The procedure estimates a local area average by appropriately weighting observations at stations within a search radius from the grid-point. Two features of SYMAP are especially advantageous for the present application. First, the weight assigned to an observation depends not only on the station distance from the grid-point, but it also accounts for the directional isolation with respect to other stations in the search neighbourhood. Clusters of observations to one side of a grid-point are appropriately down weighted. This particularly helps to improve the performance of the analysis along the boundaries between high- and low-resolution networks. Second, the search radius is adapted to the local observational density, requiring a minimum number of stations to be included. This feature allows a homogeneous treatment over the entire analysis domain,
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regardless of the local station density. Although a coarse resolution analysis results for areas with sparse data coverage, optimal use is made of the high-resolution networks. Intercomparisons of various spatial analysis schemes have demonstrated the potential of Shepards algorithm. Using surrogate daily precipitation elds from radar, Bussie ` res and Hogg (1989) found that Shepards scheme is superior to the simpler Cressman iteration and commensurate with an ordinary kriging analysis. Similarly Weber and Englund (1992) found that a distance weighting scheme similar to Shepards method could reach the accuracy of kriging techniques for their intercomparison case. The favourable performance, the exibility with station density and the computational efciency have made SYMAP a popular scheme for large-scale climatological analyses. A spherical version of the method (Willmott et al., 1985) has been adopted for a number of recent global precipitation climatologies (Legates and Willmott, 1990; Huffman et al., 1995). For the present application some modications were made to the standard SYMAP procedure. With the original algorithm area-mean quantities are determined by locally averaging point estimates, which have been calculated with an inverse square distance law on a primary ne-resolution grid (see e.g. Legates and Willmott, 1990; Rudolf et al., 1992). For simplicity in this application we use a at distance weighting function to arrive at a direct estimate of area means on the nal analysis grid. The chosen distance weighting function wd has the form: i ) = wd(r where r i =
((xs xg )/i Dx )2 + ((ys yg )/i Dy )2 is the scaled distance of the station (xs, ys ) from the grid-point (xg, yg ). The scaling factor is a multiple (i ) of the mesh size (Dx, Dy ), and it denes the size of the search neighbourhood. For each grid-point the smallest possible from i = (1, 2, 3, 4) is chosen such that at least three observations are contained in the search area. If the minimum requirement is not met with i = 4, no grid-point values is returned. Note that our setting for the radial weights is not compatible with the idea of the gradient corrections applied in the original SYMAP procedure (Shepard, 1984). This feature was omitted in our analysis. However, for the directional component of the weights the original SYMAP formula is applied. The regional adaptation of the search neighbourhood controlled by coefcient i results in variations of the effective resolution across the analysis domain. Figure 5 displays the spatial distribution of the search radius for the two subperiods with different data coverage for Northern Italy (see section 2.2). The full resolution of the underlying grid ( 25 km) is attained in the data dense areas where typically ve to 25 stations values contribute to each grid-point estimate. However, for most parts of Northern Italy (especially during the last 4 years) and for the Southern Dinaric Alps the search radius is two to three times larger than the mesh size and only three to eight stations are available per grid-point estimate. The coexistence of different search radii has some notable inuence on the analysis elds. First, there are extrapolations from data-dense into data-sparse regions, in some few locations with distances exceeding 75 km. This can lead to an articial broadening of local patterns at the boundary between high- and low-resolution coverage (see also Rudolf et al., 1992). Directional weighting can partly compensate for this effect. Second, the analysis will not be able to resolve smaller scale features in areas with low observational density, whereas a feature with a similar scale will be resolved in a data dense region. The side effects of the adaptive search neighbourhood require some attention during the interpretation of the climatological elds of section 4.
(1 + cos(y r i ))/2 0
for r 5 1i for r \ 1i
(1)
3.2. Sources of error

The accuracy of area-mean precipitation analyses suffers from the measurement error of point observations and the error due to limited spatial sampling of point observations for the area-mean estimation. Here we briey comment on the signicance of these two types of errors for the present climatology.
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Figure 5. Spatial distribution of the search radius used with the SYMAP algorithm for the analysis of station data. Values are given in units of the basic mesh size (about 25 km). The panels represent the situation for the period (a) 1971 1986 and (b) 1986 1990, with different availability of high-resolution data over Northern Italy (see also section 2.2)
Contributions to the error in conventional rain-gauge measurement stem from the deection of hydrometeors in the wind eld above the gauge orice, the wetting of gauge walls, evaporation from the container and snow drift into the gauge. Most signicant are the wind-induced losses, from which an undercatch must be expected of up to several 10 percents (e.g. Neff, 1977; Sevruk, 1985a; Groisman and Legates, 1994). The magnitude of the undercatch depends on the ambient wind speed, the drop-size distribution (i.e. precipitation intensity) and the type of precipitation (rain or snow). In principle, a correction of the systematic gauge bias could be applied using an appropriate methodology (Sevruk, 1982). This, however, would require access to wind and temperature data in as high a resolution as possible, and to include metadata on gauge details (device type, local wind exposure) important for the correction procedure (Sevruk and Zahlavova, 1994a). Although highly desirable, an Alpine-wind correction of the systematic gauge bias is thus far beyond the scope of the present study, and would require a multiyear effort.
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Sevruk (1985b) and Richter (1995) have made estimates of the long-term bias for Hellmann rain-gauges in Switzerland and southern Germany, respectively, by applying correction procedures for sample stations with additional data available. For the annual mean their results indicate a systematic undercatch of about 7% at low-elevation or protected sites and up to 25% at wind-exposed sites at higher elevations (i.e. with a signicant fraction of snowfall). The bias exhibits a distinct annual cycle, with a maximum of 8% (30%) in winter and a minimum of 5% (10%) in summer at protected (exposed) sites. For southern Switzerland (i.e. to the south of the main Alpine crest) a seasonally independent bias of about 4% was estimated. On average, for Switzerland the annual mean undercatch is calculated to 8%. The high spatial variability of rain- and snowfall over short distances (see e.g. Gutermann 1974; Blumer and Lang 1994), together with the limited spatial sampling, is associated with random and systematic errors in the area-mean estimation. For example, it has long been recognized that a systematic underestimate can result from an unrepresentative clustering of rain-gauges at low elevations (i.e. populated mountain valleys) in combination with an increase of mean precipitation with altitude (Ekhart, 1948; Peck and Brown, 1962). Even within todays high-resolution networks in the Alpine region, there is a signicant bias in station distribution relative to the area-height distribution (see Figure 6). Shepards analysis scheme does not take account of this altitudinal clustering. Methods have been proposed to compensate for this by making use of digital topography data and linear precipitation height relationships (Kirchhofer, 1993; Behr, 1993; Mu ller-Westermeier, 1995). Yet a proper application of such schemes for a large area like the Alpine region is complicated by the high spatial variability of this relationship, its non-linearity and the dependence on the spatial scale under consideration (Uttinger, 1951; Lauscher, 1976; De Montmollin et al., 1980; Lang, 1985; Phillips et al., 1992). Figure 6 gives an example with a weak, possibly insignicant height dependence. Based on observations from dense local networks, recent studies (Blumer, 1994; Desurosne et al., 1996) demonstrate that the local variability of precipitation at several Alpine massifs is often poorly cast with a function of topographic height and strongly depends on other physiographical factors (slope, exposure, broad-scale topographic environment), and that linear regression analysis over larger regions overestimates the precipitationheight gradient. Again it has been stressed that the altitudinal precipitation trends are sensitive to the correction of gauge undercatch (Sevruk and Zahlavova, 1994b). Thus an adequate account of the effect of non-representative gauge distribution in the Alpine region would presume an objective regionalization and a proper quantication of the local precipitationtopography relationship using an extended description of topography (see e.g. Be nichou, 1994; Daly et al., 1994), as well as the consideration of the measurement biases. Schemes suitable for application over large areas, such as the Alpine region, have yet to be evaluated.
Figure 6. Altitudinal distribution of the fraction of rain-gauges (full circles, right ordinate) and the fraction of surface area (light squares, hypsometric distribution, right ordinate). Results are for 200 m altitude intervals and a 150 80 km2 domain of the eastern Swiss and western Austrian Alps comprising 129 rain-gauge stations in total. Bars represent the average annual mean precipitation at stations in the corresponding altitude interval (mm day 1, left ordinate). The hypsometric distribution was determined from a topographic data set with a resolution of about 650 m (0.0083) 1998 Royal Meteorological Society Int. J. Climatol. 18: 873 900 (1998)
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Figure 7. Relative difference (%) between spatial analysis of mean annual precipitation with modied and regular weighting of high-evaluation sites. The thick line represents the 800 m MSL topographic contour
In order to estimate the analysis error associated with the unrepresentative height-distribution of the gauges (and to roughly assess the signicance of applying precipitationheight gradients in the analysis), the precipitation analysis was repeated with a modied weighting of high-elevation sites. To this end, stations above 1800 m MSL are given six times, and stations between 1200 and 1800 m MSL are given twice, the normal weight in the regular analysis scheme. (Note that these settings would roughly compensate for the elevation bias of the station sample used in Figure 6.) As alluded to above such a procedure is too crude to account adequately for topographic clustering, but the magnitude of possible analysis errors would be reected in a comparison with the unmodied analysis. The relative difference between modied and regular weighting (see Figure 7, mean annual precipitation) is mostly positive and indicates some precipitation increase with altitude in the inner Alpine region. Except for two local patches the relative difference is below 10%, which is very low when compared with the spatial variations of the annual mean distribution (see Figure 9). In fact the two distributions from the regular and modied weighting (not shown) are visually identical. This result illustrates that the characteristic mesoscale patterns of the present climatology are solid, at least qualitatively, despite the presence of a biased network and some precipitation height gradients. This conclusion is also conrmed from a slightly different viewpoint (see section 4.1 and Figure 10). Finite spatial sampling is also associated with random errors in the area mean estimates. Here we briey illustrate the spatial variations and the order of magnitude of this error component. The relative sampling error e sampl for the (climatological area-mean at grid-point j, can be expressed as: j | 0.5 e sampl = N j. j j (j P (2)
( j and sj denote, respectively, where Nj is the sample size (number of available point observations), and P the true mean and true standard deviation of point measurements in the search neighbourhood (see e.g. Rice, 1995). (For simplicity we have assumed here that the area mean is calculated as the arithmetic mean ( j and sj from the available station sample is over point observations.) Clearly an accurate estimate of P
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Figure 8. Relative sampling error e sampl (%) for the 1983 annual precipitation mean according to Equation (2). The thick line represents the 800 m MSL topographic contour
again complicated by the expected non-representativeness of this sample. Nevertheless for these illustrative purposes we can use the available point observations to estimate e sampl . j Figure 8 displays the estimated sampling error e sampl for the annual mean of the year 1983 (note that j there is high data density for north-eastern Italy during this year (Figure 4)). The spatial variations are dominated by the contrast between areas of high observational density where the estimated sampling error is generally below 5%, and areas of poor data coverage where errors in the order of 10% and more are to be expected. Large errors also can be found in some locations with dense station coverage, indicating high local variability (e.g. Massif Central, VosgesRhine valley). In summary, the accuracy of the present climatology could be improved by a further extension of the data base over data-sparse areas/periods, while for regions with dense networks the measurement bias and non-representative gauge distributions are likely to dominate over the random error contribution.
4. ALPINE CLIMATOLOGY In this section the annual, seasonal and monthly precipitation climatologies are presented. Except for precipitation frequency in section 4.3, these were obtained by averaging the respective daily precipitation elds obtained with the spatial analysis scheme described in section 3.1. This procedure, in comparison with the spatial analysis of long-term station means, allows a more optimal use of data from interrupted time series. All results refer to the 20 year reference period 19711990.
4.1. Annual mean

The mean annual precipitation is displayed in Figure 9. Despite the implicit spatial smoothing over areas of typically 500 km2, the climatology still exhibits remarkable variations, with values ranging from 1.3 mm day 1 to 6.4 mm day 1. On the scale of the entire mountain range, characteristic features of the distribution are an elongated wet anomaly extending along the northern rim of the Alps, two major wet
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Figure 9. Mean annual precipitation for the period 1971 1990. The thick line represents the 800 m MASL topographic contour
zones to the south of the main crest, intermittent dryness at several inner-Alpine regions, and generally dry conditions over the adjacent atland areas. The northern wet anomaly is typically 50 km wide and spans over more than 600 km. Distinct smaller scale variations of this band can be identied with prominent mountain massifs (e.g. Glarneralpen in eastern Switzerland, Allga uer Alps in western Austria, for geographical terms refer to Figure 2). Across the St. Gotthard transect, a narrow pass across the mountain ridge, the northern anomaly is connected to the wet zone centred over the Lago Maggiore south of the main crest. A second major wet zone of the southern rim is located north of the Adriatic Sea over the Julian and Carnic Alps (north-eastern Italy and Slovenia), and is connected to an anomaly extending along the ridge of the Dinaric Alps. The two southern anomalies exhibit the highest mean values in this mesoscale climatology. A band of enhanced rainfall spans between them following the characteristic bow-shape of the mountain ank in the Dolomiti area, and slightly moister conditions also prevail along the eastern rim of the western Alps. The wet anomalies along the Alpine rims contrast with comparatively dry conditions at inner-Alpine sectors, mostly in regions with major east west running valleys (e.g. Valais and Aosta Valley, upper Inn valley and Ka rnten). At the driest inner-Alpine spot of the climatology, near the Venosta valley in southern Tirol, mean annual precipitation is below 2 mm day 1, as low as typically observed remote from the ridge. Over the Alpine foreland regions the climatological distribution (Figure 9) shows distinct wet anomalies related to some of the smaller-scale hill ranges (e.g. Jura Mountains, Vosges, Schwarzwald, Appennino and the Massif Central). However, much like the Alpine ridge, the Massif Central also exhibits rim-type anomalies oriented along its western and south-eastern slopes. For the other cases the anomalies are found approximately centred over the topographic features. Especially, the Jura Mountains, the Vosges and Schwarzwald receive a remarkable amount of precipitation, given the comparatively small height of these topographic features. The atlands adjacent to the Alpine region exhibit little spatial variation. Southern Germany appears to be a little wetter than the atlands of north-eastern Austria, the Po Valley, central France and the lower Rho ne basin, where the lowest values are registered in the present analysis.
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Some of the features in Figure 9 should be interpreted with caution because of the variable data density and associated limitations of the analysis scheme (see section 3). For example, the weak spatial variability along the western Italian Alps (Piemonte, Ligurian Alps), or the moderate contrasts to the western Po Valley, must be considered with reservations because of the comparatively coarse station sample. Again the dry sector between the two major anomalies of the southern Alps could be inuenced by the extrapolation of dry inner-Alpine (Tirol) and atland conditions (Po Valley), compensating for the lack of in situ data (see Figure 3). Also, the generally broader scales of features along the Dinaric ridge may be the result of the moderate observational resolution in combination with the topographic complexity of the region. These conjectures are mostly supported from existing higher resolution climatologies that cover a fraction of our domain (see section 5.1). The characteristic features of Figure 9 imply that the distribution of the Alpine precipitation climate on the mesoscale is governed by the main topographic slopes at the rim, which are responsible for comparatively large-scale atmospheric ascent, enhanced precipitation and associated rain-shadowing of inner-Alpine sectors. In Figure 10 we further illustrate this characteristic pattern in terms of a north south section across the eastern ridge from southern Germany to the Po Valley. The diagram depicts the analysed mean annual precipitation (zonal average between 10.2E and 12.5E) together with the zonally-averaged topography and the statistics (minimum, maximum and interquartile range) of the long-term averages from rain-gauges in the corresponding zonal belts. Approaching the ridge from the atland (either from north or south), both the annual precipitation mean and the variability between stations increase. This effect starts at about 5080 km ahead of the base of the main topographic slope (near 47.75N, and 45.25N). The centre of the wet northern anomaly is found near the base, centred at about 800 m topographic height. The southern anomaly is at an elevation of roughly 1200 m. In the inner Alpine area, mean annual values decrease despite the steepness of the large-scale topography, and there is an attendant decrease of the zonal minimum and lower quartile in the
Figure 10. Mean annual precipitation (symbols) and topographic height (solid line) along a north south section across the eastern Alps. The data represents the zonal mean of the analysis between 10.2E and 12.6E. The symbols (see insert for legend) depict the interquartile range and the minima and maxima of the distribution of mean annual precipitation at stations in the corresponding latitude belts. The number of stations considered for each of the statistics is between 45 and 80 north of 47N and between 10 and 30 south of 47N 1998 Royal Meteorological Society Int. J. Climatol. 18: 873 900 (1998)
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station sample, which expectedly reects the rain-sheltering of stations, for example, in deep valleys. A similar tendency is also observed for the maximum and upper quartile, i.e. for quantities that represent the situation at exposed sites of the station sample (mountain tops or slopes). This result demonstrates that the inner-Alpine dryness evident in the present climatology is not merely an artefact of the unrepresentative station sample (i.e. biased towards sheltered conditions, see section 3.2). Indeed, this dryness is observed not only in sheltered valley stations, but also is equally found for the full range of station exposures. It follows that the wet rim and interior dryness anomalies are solid features of the mesoscale distribution despite some quantitative contamination from the clustering of stations near valley oors.
4.2. Annual cycle

The features of the mean annual climatology exhibit characteristic seasonal variations. Figure 11 depicts the four seasonal mean elds. In order to better depict the whole range of mean daily precipitation amounts, the contour interval is selected differently to that used for the annual mean in Figure 9. Pronounced differences are evident between winter and summer. The winter season is generally dry, shows an excitation of the anomalies over the northern rim and the forefront hill ranges (Jura Mountains, Schwarzwald, Massif Central, Appennino). The Alpine southern wet zones seen in the mean annual eld are only weakly discernible, especially that over the Lago Maggiore region. On the other hand, summer is the main rainy season in the Alps. A broad moist anomaly covers all but the south-western part of the ridge, exhibits mean values typically more than twice as large as in winter, and has embedded the familiar rim-type features. The wet conditions in the mountains contrast with the dry summer climate of the French Mediterranean coast, the lower Rhone Valley, the Italian peninsula and the eastern Adriatic coast. For spring and autumn the general mean patterns are fairly similar (Figure 11). The major wet regions known from the annual mean are evident in both seasons, but in contrast to winter and summer, the southern rim anomalies are particularly prominent. Here spring and autumn means reach values similar to those in summer, whereas the areas north of the main crest are clearly dryer. An illustration of the pronounced month-by-month variations in the annual cycle over selected subdomains is provided in Figure 12. A monomodal cycle prevails north of the Alpine main crest (southern Germany and northern Alps), with the highest precipitation amount during the main convective period (MaySeptember). Weaker variations are evident for the Schwarzwald (also representative for the Jura Mountains) where a secondary smooth precipitation maximum is found between November and January. The southern and south-western Alpine areas exhibit a bimodal regime, with maxima in spring/early summer and in autumn. For four of the regions (Cevennes, south-western Alps, Lago Maggiore and Po valley) the month of October is a well pronounced maximum and the high precipitation activity of this month in the Appennino, the Po Valley and the Adriatic east coast is also reected in the autumn mean distribution of Figure 11.
4.3. Precipitation frequency

A further interesting aspect of the Alpine precipitation climate is the frequency of days with precipitation, dened here as the occurrence of days with a total larger than or equal to 1 mm. (Note that the frequency at lower thresholds may suffer from the observers accuracy (Bo hm, 1978).) The mean annual distribution is shown in Figure 13. In contrast to the climatologies of Figures 9 and 11, this diagram was obtained from the analysis of the long-term mean frequencies at individual stations. Here the Alpine topography is reected in the pronounced gradient across the main crest. To the south of the ridge (Po Valley) the occurrence is below 24%, whereas to the north, rain or snowfall is observed every third day or more on average. The distribution is quite different from that of the mean precipitation (cf. Figure 9), and some of the characteristic features of the latter, such as the Alpine rim anomalies, are at most weakly discernible in the precipitation frequency. There is a similarly pronounced demarcation between frequent and rare occurrences across the Massif Central. It appears that this hill range contributes to the screening of some precipitation systems from the lower Rho ne valley and the south-western Alps, where
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Figure 11. Mean seasonal precipitation for the period 1971 1990. Note that contour intervals are consistent between the four panels but differ from the setting in Figure 9. DJF: winter; MAM: spring; JJA: summer, SON: autumn
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Figure 12. Mean annual cycle of monthly precipitation (mm day 1) for selected subdomains in the Alpine region. Domains are outlined in the inset
the precipitation frequency shows a gradual northsouth transition and reaches even slightly lower values than over the Po Valley. Finally, note the rare occurrence of precipitation over north-eastern Austria, which signals the more continental-type climate of this region, possibly amplied by an Alpine-scale shielding effect. The remarkable across-ridge variations in the frequency and the concurrent quasi-symmetry of the mean amounts, point to the high precipitation intensity along the southern rim of the Alpine ridge. In fact the Lago-Maggiore region and Julian-Carnic Alps are known to be often affected by severe precipitation events (e.g. Geiger et al., 1991; Bonelli and Pelosini, 1992; Frei, 1995; Cicogna et al., 1996). Similarly over southern France an enhanced frequency of extreme events has been noted for the south-eastern rime of the Massif Central (Jacq, 1994). A thorough analysis of the intensity distribution and the climatology of strong precipitation events from the present Alpine-wide data set will be presented in a forthcoming paper.
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Figure 13. Annual frequency (%) of days with precipitation ] 1 mm. The distribution was obtained directly by spatial analysis of frequencies determined at individual stations
5. COMPARISON WITH EXISTING CLIMATOLOGIES As outlined in the introduction, the present mesoscale Alpine climatology is intermediate to two groups of existing climatologies high-resolution sectorial climatological maps, and coarser resolution continental or global analyses. In this section we compare the results of the present mesoclimatology with elds from both of these groups.
5.1. High -resolution sectorial climatologies

Here the comparison is based on mean annual precipitation elds mostly published in national climatic atlases in the form of charts. Table I contains a list of the references consulted. To our knowledge the selection reects most recent work ofcially available from the respective countries. The comparison with these charts is complicated by the variable reference period adopted and most of all by the incompatible resolution. With a resolution near the kilometre scale there is a lot of detail provided and some eye-smoothing was necessary to estimate the supra-local features for comparison with our climatology. The present comparison is therefore rather descriptive. As far as data-dense regions are concerned, the mean annual precipitation displayed in Figure 9 gives a highly satisfactory qualitative representation of the gross features in the high-resolution climatologies. A fractured wet zone along the northern mountain chain; large mean values in the Lago Maggiore region and the Julian-Carnic Alps as well as wet anomalies associated with the Jura Mountains, Schwarzwald, the Massif Central and Appennino range are features that can be discerned clearly in the national high-resolution climatologies. This also pertains for the dry conditions in the major along-ridge valleys (below 2 mm day 1 for the Inn valley, Valais and Aosta valley). Discrepancies of a quantitative nature occur for some of the high-altitude mountainous regions. For example the yearly maximum in the northern wet zone (4.25 mm day 1, see Figure 10) is lower than a
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rough estimate from German and Austrian climatological charts (between 4.4 and 5.2 mm day 1). These discrepancies may arise from the application of a linear precipitationtopography relationship for the high-resolution analyses (or the neglect of such dependencies in the present study), as well as from the incorporation of annual collector data for the national climatologies. Some of the quantitative discrepancies with the climatology for Switzerland may also be attributed to the correction of gauge undercatch considered for the Swiss climatology, but not the present study. Regarding the sectors with comparatively poor data coverage, the present climatology offers a reasonable but partly inaccurate picture of the gross features. For example, the Italian climatology shows more structure for the moist zone along the Piemonte Alpine ank (2.74.1 mm) and generally lower values for the western Po Valley ( B 2 mm day 1). Also the moist zone connecting the major southern anomalies is slightly more pronounced. Again a comparison with sectorial climatologies for the Dinaric ridge shows that the regional maxima of the present climatology are reasonably well positioned but slightly too broad in scale, extending too far to the east. In all these cases poor data coverage and/or the extrapolation from dense networks is likely to be the primary reason for the discrepancies (see also section 3.1). One limitation evident in Figure 9 is particularly noteworthy and pertains to the underlying mesoscale resolution. The sectorial high-resolution climatologies exhibit individual dry conditions (less than 2 mm day 1) for the two parallel running Valais and Aosta valleys (50 km apart) and signicantly enhanced mean values for the mountain massif in between (Monte Rosa). The limitations in resolution (of the station sample and the analysis scheme) impede the depiction of such strong regional variations in the present climatology, yet an areal average value of 2.3 mm day 1 is reproduced. A similar situation is found for the Salzach and Drau valleys and the Hohe Tauern massif in Austria. To accurately capture such local features at the current resolution would require account to be taken of the local precipitation topography relationships (see section 3.2). Of special interest for the present intercomparison is the Alpine-wide precipitation climatology of Fliri (1974). His subjective analysis is at a resolution comparable to that of Figure 9, yet had to be based on a coarser network. The mean distribution (also reproduced in Scha r et al., 1997) conrms the general picture of our analysis, but also highlights the aforementioned inaccuracies in data-poor regions. Fliri (1974) also computed the annual cycle for a selection of observation sites in the Alpine region. Together with other studies (e.g. Steinhauser, 1949; Ceschia et al., 1991; Bonelli and Pelosini, 1992; Cacciamani et al., 1995) these conrm the spatial variations of the annual cycle regimes displayed in Figure 12.
5.2. Coarse -resolution climatologies

The two coarse-resolution precipitation climatologies to be considered are the corresponding sectors of the global analysis by Legates and Willmott (1990); hereafter LW) and the precipitation climatology for greater Europe of the Climate Research Unit (Hulme et al., 1995; hereafter CRU). Both these climatologies were established from long-term monthly mean rain-gauge data analysed on to a regular grid with 0.5 resolution (corresponding to about 50 km). In order to restrict the intercomparison with our climatology to the resolved features, the present Alpine high-density data set was reanalysed with a comparable resolution, and this low-resolution climatology will be referred to as AL in this subsection. In comparison with the Alpine analysis the coarse-resolution climatologies had to be founded on a highly restricted station ensemble. Presumably not more than a few dozen rain-gauges were available in the Alpine region, and it can thus be expected that this is one of the main reasons for discrepancies with the present climatology. Differences in the reference period, the data preprocessing and the analysis procedure may also be important: the CRU climatology strictly relies on station normals for the 19611990 reference, whereas LW considered all available means covering some part of the 19201980 period. In contrast to the other analyses, LW applied a correction to the station data for systematic gauge undercatch (see also section 3.2). The spatial analysis method for LW is very similar to that of the present Alpine climatology (see section 3.1), whereas CRU is based on an analysis method that uses topographic elevation as an additional predictor variable. Three precipitation climatologies were produced by CRU for
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Figure 14. Long-term mean annual precipitation in the Alpine region according to the analyses of Legates and Willmott (1990); (LW), Hulme et al. (1995); (CRU) and the present high-resolution data using a comparable grid resolution (AL). Note that different grey-scales have been used for the various panels
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Figure 15. Mean annual cycle of domain-average Alpine precipitation (mm day 1, domain indicated in the AL panel of Figure 14) according to Legates and Willmott (1990); (LW), Hulme et al. (1995); (CRU) and the present analysis (AL)
the minimum (CRU-LO), mean (CRU-MN) and maximum (CRU-HI) elevation of the grid pixels as taken from a digital elevation model. Apart from yielding information on the vertical gradients, Hulme et al. (1995) anticipate that some adjustment could be made in the CRU-MN elds for the unrepresentative distribution of stations (i.e., the bias towards low elevations, see section 3.2). Long-term mean annual distributions of the two low-density climatologies are displayed in Figure 14 together with the high-density AL eld. With respect to the main pattern there is surprising similarity between the LW and AL elds. The global analysis resolves the northern Alpine rim zone, the inner Alpine dryness and there is also enhanced precipitation along the southern rim. Discrepancies with AL are found in a wet zone over central Switzerland, the lower prominence of the Lago Maggiore southern anomaly and the connection of the rim anomalies across the eastern Alps. The CRU analysis also represents an Alpine precipitation anomaly, yet without smaller scale details. The signal takes the form of a strong anomaly centred over the high Alps of eastern Switzerland and a smaller scale, weaker anomaly over the south-eastern Alps. A similar general pattern is found in the CRU-LO and the CRU-HI elds (not shown). In quantitative terms both the CRU and LW climatologies give substantially higher peak values over the mountain ridge compared with AL, but over the at foreland areas there is close agreement. Averaged over the entire Alps (frame in AL-panel of Figure 14) the mean annual values are 3.1 mm day 1 for AL and 3.5 mm day 1 ( + 13%) for both the CRU and LW climatologies. An intercomparison of the monthly mean elds (not shown) shows similar results. The global analysis (LW) exhibits characteristic seasonal variations comparable to AL (see also section 4.2), although there are differences with respect to the amplitude of individual features. For CRU the annual variations in the pattern are less pronounced, the major anomaly being evident throughout the year. Averaged over the entire Alps, all three climatologies exhibit an annual cycle with a summer maximum and a minimum in late winter (see Figure 15). Generally CRU and LW precipitation values are larger than those in AL. Maximum discrepancies are in wintertime, where the relative differences to AL amount to 20%, but there are also remarkable differences for up to 25% for individual summer and autumn months (for CRU in August and for LW in October). The generally smooth appearance of the CRU pattern indicates that its effective resolution is somewhat coarser than the spacing of the underlying grid. This can be expected, at least partly from limitations in station density, which probably in this area did not allow for a resolution at the scale of the mesh. An important factor of the CRU is the large and uniform vertical gradient (1.4 mm day 1 per 1000 m) evident in the three-dimensional analysis (not shown). Its magnitude appears to be at the upper limit of what can be observed locally in the Alpine region (e.g. Lang, 1985; Blumer, 1994). It is likely that this gradient is responsible for the prominent imprint of the Alpine ridge into the climatology, as well as the lack of inner-Alpine dryness, and consequently the generally larger domain-mean values compared with AL. We presume that sparse data coverage has forced the CRU analysis scheme to infer vertical gradients from variations between stations on the foreland and elevated sites along the mountain ridge.
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The higher domain-mean values of LW compared with AL may be attributed at least partly to the corrections of the systematic gauge undercatch (carried out for LW, but not for CRU and AL). This interpretation is supported by the generally larger differences in winter compared with summer (see Figure 15), consistent with larger corrections for snow undercatch in the cold season. The relative difference in the annual and domain mean between LW and AL (13%) is slightly larger than the correction factor (8%) found on average over Switzerland (Sevruk, 1985b). The intercomparison of the domain-mean annual cycle (over the area indicated in the AL panel of Figure 14) indicates a critical aspect of the station density for Alpine climatologies. The various features of the Alpine precipitation pattern exhibit pronounced variations in the annual cycle (see section 4 and Figure 12). Hence an accurate representation of the annual cycle, even in the domain-average, relies on a proper representation of the relative magnitude and size of these features. This goal is obviously difcult to achieve from a station sample that is at the limit of resolving such features.
6. CONCLUSIONS A new mesoscale climatology has been constructed for the area of the European Alps and the adjacent foreland. The design of the climatology is adapted to the specic needs of mesoscale climate dynamics and model validation purposes. The coverage of several countries and the attempted spatial resolution and accuracy of the analysis have demanded that a special effort be made in the establishment of an adequate data base. The resulting climatology is the rst that is derived from a combination of many national high-resolution rain-gauge networks since the seminal study of Fliri (1974), and it is the only one of its kind that is available in digital form (for access over the Internet see Frei, 1997). In the climatology presented, most of the Alpine domain is covered with an observational density that is exceptional for mountainous terrain. A spatial analysis was undertaken on a 25 km grid, separately for each day of the period 1971 1990, and long-term monthly and seasonal means were derived from the resulting set of daily grids. Possible error sources include the systematic rain-gauge bias, the clustering of rain-gauges at low elevations, and errors in some regional features pertaining to the areas/periods with coarse station density. The primary precipitation characteristics in the Alps are the moist zones extending along the primary anks, and dry conditions in the interior of the mountain range. This pattern is evident throughout the year, but with remarkable and non-synchronous seasonal variations in the amplitude of individual anomalies. The processes that appear most relevant for this range-scale pattern are the orographically forced upslope precipitation downwind sheltering (Smith, 1979; Banta, 1990) and topographically triggered summertime convection (e.g. Cacciamani et al., 1995; Schiesser et al., 1995). Altitudinal extrema of mean precipitation (as evident from the forelandrimridge contrasts) have also been attributed to the rapid decrease of atmospheric moisture with altitude (e.g. Lang, 1985; Alpert, 1986). The Alpine features and processes contrast with the precipitation signal as observed over some smaller-scale hills, which possess an orographic precipitation anomaly centred over the topographic high that is more characteristic for seederfeeder-type rainfall enhancement (Bergeron, 1968; Browning et al., 1974). Yet for many real-case situations in the Alpine region the above prototype mechanisms provide a rather limited picture of the orographic inuence on precipitation. Dynamic interactions between weather systems and the mountain ridge engender a wealth of mesoscale dynamic phenomena, many of which are associated with preferred regions and seasons of occurrence as well as characteristic precipitation signals (e.g. Scha r et al., 1997). Furthermore the proximity of both Mediterranean and the Atlantic modulates the moisture ux during southerly and westerly ow conditions. The presented distribution of long-term mean precipitation is therefore the result of the combined inuence from several large-scale climatic regimes, the specic geographical nature and shape of the Alps, and a complex multiscale interaction of the mountain range with a variety of weather and ow systems. The specic characteristics of the Alpine precipitation anomaly also pose a serious challenge to the objective analysis of precipitation data. The occurrence of inner-Alpine regions of dryness (as is well
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illustrated in Figure 10) clearly demonstrates that the use of precipitationheight correlations in interpolating station data should be used only with great care. Ideally such statistical relations should distinguish between the exposure of the station (summit and valley stations, upstream and downstream facing stations), allow for variability within the Alpine region, and ensure that horizontal precipitation variations across the Alpine ridge are not mistaken as vertical gradients. An intercomparison of the Alpine sectors from a coarse-resolution global (Legates and Willmott, 1990) and a continental climatology (Hulme et al., 1995) with the present analysis points to some limitations of the former, primarily associated with a restricted observational network. Certainly an accurate representation on the 50 km scale was beyond the scope of these climatologies. Rather they were designed for validating global climate models on the 100 200 km scale. Also, the rain-gauge sample available may sufce over at terrain. The limitations over complex terrain are nevertheless worth noting because there is a tendency to use coarse-resolution analyses for validating regional climate models. The differences between our analysis results and those of the large-scale climatologies also points to possible uncertainties in large-scale analyses for other mountainous regions. The use of the present analysis for mesoscale meteorological and climatological studies is not only supported by the adequate spatial resolution, but also from the availability of daily analysis elds, which enable investigations of the temporal variability of Alpine precipitation. In subsequent papers we will exploit the data base for the frequency analysis of heavy precipitation events (for preliminary results see Frei, 1995). The data could also be used for a range of other purposes such as the analysis of past precipitation variability and its relation to the synoptic-scale ow (Widmann et al., 1995; Widmann, 1996), the investigation of the sensitivity of the hydrological cycle with respect to putative climate changes (e.g. Frei et al., 1997), the construction of down-scaling methods to infer regional precipitation patterns and changes from larger scale information (e.g. Bretherton et al., 1992; Gyalistras et al., 1994; Von Storch, 1995; Fuentes and Heimann, 1996) the evaluation and improvement of high-resolution numerical weather prediction models (as planned within the Mesoscale Alpine Programme, see Binder and Scha r, 1995), and regional climate models (e.g. Marinucci et al., 1995; Lu thi et al., 1995). A further area of possible application is the validation and calibration of remote sensing techniques for the monitoring of precipitation from satellites (e.g. Arkin and Ardanuy, 1989; Rasmusson and Arkin, 1993) or radar (e.g. Joss and Lee, 1995). For all the aforementioned applications, the Alpine region could provide an ideal mountainous testing framework, due to the presence of one of the densest high reliability observational networks covering one of the Earths major mountain ranges.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We gratefully acknowledge fruitful discussions with and valuable information for this climatology from: Ingeborg Auer (ZAMG, Wien), Huw Davies (Atmospheric Science ETH, Zu rich), Franz Fliri (University of Innsbruck), Thomas Gutermann (SMA, Zu rich), Herbert Lang and his co-workers (Geography ETH, Zu rich), Joze Rakovec (University of Ljubljana), Bruno Rudolf (GPCC, Offenbach), Max Schu epp (SMA, Zu rich), Heinz Wanner (University of Bern) and Martin Widmann (University of Washington, Seattle). We are indebted to the following institutes for providing access to daily precipitation data: Deutscher Wetterdienst, Offenbach a. M.; Hydrographisches Zentralbu ro des Bundesministeriums fu r Land- und Forstwirtschaft, Wien; Zentralanstalt fu r Meteorologie und Geodynamik, Wien; Me te oFrance, Toulouse; Ufcio Centrale di Ecologia Agraria, Rome; Swiss Meteorological Institute, Zu rich; Servizio Idrograco e Mareograco Nazionale, Rome; the Italian MAP working group on climatology; the Meteorological and Hydrological Service, Zagreb; and the Hydrometeorological Institute of Slovenia, Ljubljana. The following individuals were particularly helpful in providing the relevant personal contacts and helping to obtain access to the data: Guillaume Baillon, Mauro Bencivenga, Philippe Bougeault, Peter Binder, Carlo Cacciamani, Tanja Cegnar, E. Fischer, Thomas Gutermann, Branca Ivancan-Picek, Andreas Kaestner, Manfred Kurz, Janja Milkovic, Franz Nobilis, Marc Payen, Luigi Perrini, H. Schmidt, Tomas Vrhovec. The gridded surface climatology CRU95 used in section 5 has been supplied by the
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Climate Impacts LINK Project (Department of the Environment Contract PECD7/12/96) on behalf of the Climate Research Unit. The visualization of the analysis elds was done with the graphics package IVE developed at the University of Washington (Seattle). The research was supported by contributions from the Swiss Priority Program (contract SPP-U 5001-044602).
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY Int. J. Climatol.

18: 873900 (1998)

A PRECIPITATION CLIMATOLOGY OF THE ALPS FROM HIGH-RESOLUTION RAIN-GAUGE OBSERVATIONS

region; precipitation averages; rain-gauge networks; meso-climatology; mountain climate

CCC 08998418/98/080873 28$17.50 1998 Royal Meteorological Society

8R C. FREI AND C. SCHA

Italy Switzerland Slovenia, Croatia, Dinaric ridge Vosges and Schwarzwald

1998 Royal Meteorological Society

ALPS PRECIPITATION CLIMATOLOGY

8R C. FREI AND C. SCHA

2.1. Domain and topography

ALPS PRECIPITATION CLIMATOLOGY

8R C. FREI AND C. SCHA

2.2. The precipitation data set

ALPS PRECIPITATION CLIMATOLOGY

8R C. FREI AND C. SCHA

2.3. Quality control

ALPS PRECIPITATION CLIMATOLOGY

3.1. Spatial analysis scheme

8R C. FREI AND C. SCHA

3.2. Sources of error

ALPS PRECIPITATION CLIMATOLOGY

8R C. FREI AND C. SCHA

ALPS PRECIPITATION CLIMATOLOGY

8R C. FREI AND C. SCHA

4.1. Annual mean

ALPS PRECIPITATION CLIMATOLOGY

8R C. FREI AND C. SCHA

ALPS PRECIPITATION CLIMATOLOGY

4.2. Annual cycle

4.3. Precipitation frequency

1998 Royal Meteorological Society

8R C. FREI AND C. SCHA

Int. J. Climatol. 18: 873 900 (1998)

ALPS PRECIPITATION CLIMATOLOGY

8R C. FREI AND C. SCHA

5.1. High -resolution sectorial climatologies

ALPS PRECIPITATION CLIMATOLOGY

5.2. Coarse -resolution climatologies

8R C. FREI AND C. SCHA

1998 Royal Meteorological Society

Int. J. Climatol. 18: 873 900 (1998)

ALPS PRECIPITATION CLIMATOLOGY

8R C. FREI AND C. SCHA

ALPS PRECIPITATION CLIMATOLOGY

8R C. FREI AND C. SCHA

ALPS PRECIPITATION CLIMATOLOGY

8R C. FREI AND C. SCHA

1998 Royal Meteorological Society

Int. J. Climatol. 18: 873 900 (1998)

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