Andreas Hense

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since 2022 retired 1990-2022Professor (C3) Meteorologisches Institut, Universität Bonn, now Abt. Meteorologie, Institute für Geowissenschaften, Universität Bonn1987-1988 Scientist at Alfred-Wegener Institut Bremerhaven1986-1987 Scientist at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Institut für Festkörperforschung1982-1986 Scientist Meteorologisches Institut, Universität Bonn1981-1982 Scientist Deutscher Wetterdienst, Offenbach Research Department1979-1981 Scientist Institut für Geophysik und Meteorologie, Universität zu Köln

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Papers by Andreas Hense

Refining data-data and data-model biome comparisons using the Earth Movers' Distance (EMD)

Biome reconstructions are commonly used in data-data and data-model comparison studies to underst... more Biome reconstructions are commonly used in data-data and data-model comparison studies to understand past vegetation dynamics. However, most of these assessments are based on the direct comparison of dominant biomes inferred from pollen samples or vegetation simulations. Dominant biomes are deduced from pollen samples using biome affinity scores, which aggregate pollen percentages of taxa assigned to the different biomes. While this approach generates good results over a large range of temporal and spatial scales, reducing pollen assemblages to a single dominant biome can substantially simplify the vegetation signal preserved in pollen samples and even bias conclusions when, for instance, minimal changes in pollen percentages can change the inferred dominant biome. To resolve these issues, we propose to use the Earth Movers' distance (EMD) as a new metric to compare distributions of biome scores. The EMD has two main advantages: 1) the distributions of biome scores do not need to be reduced to their dominant biome, and the full breadth of the data is taken into account, and 2) different weights can be given to different types of disagreements to account for the ecological distance (e.g. reconstructing a temperate forest instead of a boreal forest is ecologically less wrong than reconstructing the temperate forest instead of a desert). We also introduce EMD-based statistical tests that determine if the similarity of two samples is significantly better than a random association. This paper illustrates the use of the EMD across a series of palaeoecological data-data and data-model case studies based on published data and simulations. These applications highlight the diverse types of analysis where the EMD adds value compared to analyses of the dominant biomes only. The EMD and the statistical tests are included in the paleotools R package ().

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Cluster analysis of European surface ozone observations for evaluation of MACC reanalysis data

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Jun 6, 2016

The high density of European surface ozone monitoring sites provides unique opportunities for the... more The high density of European surface ozone monitoring sites provides unique opportunities for the investigation of regional ozone representativeness and for the evaluation of chemistry climate models. The regional representativeness of European ozone measurements is examined through a cluster analysis (CA) of 4 years of 3-hourly ozone data from 1492 European surface monitoring stations in the Airbase database; the time resolution corresponds to the output frequency of the model that is compared to the data in this study. K-means clustering is implemented for seasonal-diurnal variations (i) in absolute mixing ratio units and (ii) normalized by the overall mean ozone mixing ratio at each site. Statistical tests suggest that each CA can distinguish between four and five different ozone pollution regimes. The individual clusters reveal differences in seasonal-diurnal cycles, showing typical patterns of the ozone behavior for more polluted stations or more rural background. The robustness of the clustering was tested with a series of k-means runs decreasing randomly the size of the initial data set or lengths of the time series. Except for the Po Valley, the clustering does not provide a regional differentiation, as the member stations within each cluster are generally distributed all over Europe. The typical seasonal, diurnal, and weekly cycles of each cluster are compared to the output of the multi-year global reanalysis produced within the Monitoring of Atmospheric Composition and Climate (MACC) project. While the MACC reanalysis generally captures the shape of the diurnal cycles and the diurnal amplitudes, it is not able to reproduce the seasonal cycles very well and it exhibits a high bias up to 12 nmol mol -1 . The bias decreases from more polluted clusters to cleaner ones. Also, the seasonal and weekly cycles and frequency distributions of ozone mixing ratios are better described for clusters with relatively clean signatures. Due to relative sparsity of CO and NO x measurements these were not included in the CA. However, simulated CO and NO x mixing ratios are consistent with the general classification into more polluted and more background sites. Mean CO mixing ratios are within 140-145 nmol mol -1 (CL1-CL3) and 130-135 nmol mol -1 (CL4 and CL5), and NO x mixing ratios are within 4-6 nmol mol -1 and 2-3 nmol mol -1 , respectively. These results confirm that relatively coarse-scale global models are more suitable for simulation of regional background concentrations, which are less variable in space and time. We conclude that CA of surface ozone observations provides a powerful and robust way to stratify sets of stations, being thus more suitable for model evaluation.

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Supplementary material to "Cluster analysis of European surface ozone observations for evaluation of MACC reanalysis data&quot

Table . The final list of 1492 stations used in the CA. Indicated number of data points, removed ... more Table . The final list of 1492 stations used in the CA. Indicated number of data points, removed with the automatic data quality filter: "N mis."number of missing data points; "N flag."number of all data points below zero, above threshold, near missing value, or outliers; "N valid"total number of valid data points. Last two columnsnumber of cluster each station belongs to. station ID station name lon. lat. alt., m N mis. N flag. N valid CL,

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A Matérn-Based Multivariate Gaussian Random Process for a Consistent Model of the Horizontal Wind Components and Related Variables

Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 2017

The integration of physical relationships into stochastic models is of major interest, for exampl... more The integration of physical relationships into stochastic models is of major interest, for example, in data assimilation. Here, a multivariate Gaussian random field formulation is introduced that represents the differential relations of the two-dimensional wind field and related variables such as the streamfunction, velocity potential, vorticity, and divergence. The covariance model is based on a flexible bivariate Matérn covariance function for the streamfunction and velocity potential. It allows for different variances in the potentials, nonzero correlations between them, anisotropy, and a flexible smoothness parameter. The joint covariance function of the related variables is derived analytically. Further, it is shown that a consistent model with nonzero correlations between the potentials and positive definite covariance function is possible. The statistical model is fitted to forecasts of the horizontal wind fields of a mesoscale numerical weather prediction system. Parameter u...

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Combining a pollen and macrofossil synthesis with climate simulations for spatial reconstructions of European climate using Bayesian filtering

Climate of the Past, 2019

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A new Dead Sea pollen record reveals the last glacial paleoenvironment of the southern Levant

Quaternary Science Reviews, 2019

The southern Levant is a key region for studying vegetation developments in relation to climate d... more The southern Levant is a key region for studying vegetation developments in relation to climate dynamics and hominin migration processes in the past due to the sensitivity of the vegetation to climate variations and the long history of different anthropogenic occupation phases. However, paleoenvironmental conditions in the southern Levant during the Late Pleistocene were still insufficiently understood. Therefore, we investigated the vegetation and fire history of the Dead Sea region during the last glacial period. We present a new palynological study conducted on sediments of Lake Lisan, the last glacial precursor of the Dead Sea. The sediments were recovered from the center of the modern Dead Sea within an ICDP campaign. The palynological results suggest that Irano-Turanian steppe and Saharo-Arabian desert vegetation prevailed in the Dead Sea region during the investigated period (ca. 88,000 e14,000 years BP). Nevertheless, Mediterranean woodland elements significantly contributed to the vegetation composition, suggesting moderate amounts of available water for plants. The early last glacial was characterized by dynamic climate conditions with pronounced dry phases and high but unstable fire activity. Anatomically modern humans entered the southern Levant during a climatically stable phase (late MIS 4eMIS 3) with diverse habitats, constant moisture availability, and low fire activity. MIS 2 was the coldest phase of the investigated timeframe, causing changes in woodland composition and a widespread occurrence of steppe. We used a biome modeling approach to assess regional vegetation patterns under changing climate conditions and to evaluate different climate scenarios for the last glacial Levant. The study provides new insights into the environmental responses of the Dead Sea region to climate variations through time. It contributes towards our understanding of the paleoenvironmental conditions in the southern Levant, which functioned as an important corridor for human migration processes.

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Coherent evolution of potential vorticity anomalies associated with deep moist convection

Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 2017

Potential vorticity (PV) elegantly describes synoptic-and planetary-scale dynamics, but it has re... more Potential vorticity (PV) elegantly describes synoptic-and planetary-scale dynamics, but it has received less attention on smaller scales. On the convective scale, PV is characterised by dipoles associated with convective cells. We show that the PV dipoles are statistically significant and associated with statistically significant flow anomalies. Our hypothesis is that there is a coherent evolution of the PV dipoles. This hypothesis is tested by tracking convective cells in the non-hydrostatic COSMO-DE numerical weather prediction model during nine severe weather events. The 3135 convective cells used in this study are representative of deep moist convection over Western Europe in the COSMO-DE model. Composites of the evolution of convective cells are made, and differences between 'normal' and intense cells are discussed. Even when averaging over 3135 cells during nine cases, a clear horizontal PV dipole pattern can be seen with associated flow anomalies. Compared to normal cells, intense cells (identified using PV, precipitation rate or vertical velocity) have a more monopole morphology, which resembles that of supercells. The statistically significant flow anomalies associated with the PV anomalies imply that the PV dipoles might be invertible in a statistical way.

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Towards a probabilistic regional reanalysis system for Europe: evaluation of precipitation from experiments

Tellus A: Dynamic Meteorology and Oceanography, 2016

A new development in the field of reanalyses is the incorporation of uncertainty estimation capab... more A new development in the field of reanalyses is the incorporation of uncertainty estimation capabilities. We have developed a probabilistic regional reanalysis system for the CORDEX-EUR11 domain that is based on the numerical weather prediction model COSMO at a 12-km grid spacing. The lateral boundary conditions of all ensemble members are provided by the global reanalysis ERA-Interim. In the basic implementation of the system, uncertainties due to observation errors are estimated. Atmospheric assimilation of conventional observations perturbed by means of random samples of observation error yields estimates of the reanalysis uncertainty conditioned to observation errors. The data assimilation employed is a new scheme based on observation nudging that we denote ensemble nudging. The lower boundary of the atmosphere is regularly updated by external snow depth, sea surface temperature and soil moisture analyses. One of the most important purposes of reanalyses is the estimation of so-called essential climate variables. For regional reanalyses, precipitation has been identified as one of the essential climate variables that are potentially better represented than in other climate data sets. For that reason, we assess the representation of precipitation in our system in a pilot study. Based on two experiments, each of which extends over one month, we conduct a preliminary comparison to the global reanalysis ERA-Interim, a dynamical downscaling of the latter and the high-resolution regional reanalysis COSMO-REA6. In a next step, we assess our reanalysis system's probabilistic capabilities versus the ECMWF-EPS in terms of sixhourly precipitation sums. The added value of our probabilistic regional reanalysis system motivates the current production of a 5-year-long test reanalysis COSMO-EN-REA12 in the framework of the FP7-funded project Uncertainties in Ensembles of Regional Re-Analyses (UERRA).

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Studying the influence of groundwater representations on land surface‐atmosphere feedbacks during the European heat wave in 2003

Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 2016

The impact of 3D groundwater dynamics as part of the hydrologic cycle is rarely considered in reg... more The impact of 3D groundwater dynamics as part of the hydrologic cycle is rarely considered in regional climate simulation experiments. However, there exists a spatial and temporal connection between groundwater and soil moisture near the land surface, which can influence the land surface‐atmosphere feedbacks during heat waves. This study assesses the sensitivity of bedrock‐to‐atmosphere simulations to groundwater representations at the continental scale during the European heat wave 2003 using an integrated fully coupled soil‐vegetation‐atmosphere model. The analysis is based on the comparison of two groundwater configurations: (1) 3D physics‐based variably saturated groundwater dynamics and (2) a 1D free drainage (FD) approach. Furthermore, two different subsurface hydrofacies distributions (HFD) account for the uncertainty of the subsurface hydraulic characteristics, and ensemble simulations address the uncertainty arising from different surface‐subsurface initial conditions. The ...

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Kriterien und Grundzüge einer rationalen Klimapolitik

Klimavorhersage und Klimavorsorge, 2002

Von vielen Seiten wird eine in sich schlüssige (stimmige, zielführende, abgestimmte usw.) und ins... more Von vielen Seiten wird eine in sich schlüssige (stimmige, zielführende, abgestimmte usw.) und insofern rationale Gesamtkonzeption zum Klimaschutz gefordert. Diese Forderung kann sich auf unterschiedliche Ebenen beziehen (global, EU-weit, national usw.). So beklagt der SRU (SRU 2000, Tz. 792) das Fehlen einer „schlüssigen und umfassenden“ nationalen Klimaschutzstrategie.1 Derartige Anmahnungen setzen Vorstellungen darüber voraus, was unter Rationalität in der Klimapolitik zu verstehen sei. Es lassen sich unterschiedliche präskriptive Geltungsansprüche mit dieser Forderung nach einer rationalen Klimapolitik verknüpfen, die sich auf Reduktionsziele2 oder Verteilungskriterien, auf staatliche Rahmenbedingungen, auf die Vereinbarkeit mit einem parallelen Ausstieg aus der Nutzung der Kernenergie, auf die Integration von Klimapolitik mit anderen Politikfeldern (Verkehrspolitik, EU-Integration, Luftreinhaltungspolitik, Entwicklungshilfe usw.), auf Strategien der internationalen Verhandlungsführung usw. beziehen können. Die Probleme von Zielfindungsprozessen wurden in Kapitel 2.6 erörtert, Festzuhalten ist, dass mittelund langfristige klimapolitische Zielsetzungen unerlässlich sind, hinsichtlich ihrer Rechtfertigungslogik transparent gemacht und ethisch, rechtlich und ökonomisch beurteilt werden können müssen.

Fazit

Klimavorhersage und Klimavorsorge, 2002

Der zu Beginn dargelegte Sachstand zu Problemen des Klimawandels (Kap. 1), ihre transdisziplinäre... more Der zu Beginn dargelegte Sachstand zu Problemen des Klimawandels (Kap. 1), ihre transdisziplinäre Beurteilung (Kap.2) und die vorstehenden Erörterungen von Elementen rationaler Klimapolitik (Kap. 3.1–3.3) erlauben die Entwicklung und Formulierung allgemeiner Schlussfolgerungen und Empfehlungen zu einem angemessenen Umgang mit der Klimaproblematik. So können folgende Feststellungen getroffen werden: 1. Die wissenschaftlichen Untersuchungen über die möglichen Entwicklungen der Treibhausgas-Emissionen und daraus folgende

Al-Ansab and the Dead Sea: Mid-MIS 3 archaeology and environment of the early Ahmarian population of the Levantine corridor

PLOS ONE, 2020

Our field data from the Upper Palaeolithic site of Al-Ansab 1 (Jordan) and from a pollen sequence... more Our field data from the Upper Palaeolithic site of Al-Ansab 1 (Jordan) and from a pollen sequence in the Dead Sea elucidate the role that changing Steppe landscapes played in facilitating anatomically modern human populations to enter a major expansion and consolidation phase, known as the "Early Ahmarian", several millennia subsequent to their initial Marine Isotope Stage 4/3 migration from Africa, into the Middle East. The Early Ahmarian techno-cultural unit covers a time range between 45 ka-37 ka BP. With so far more than 50 sites found, the Early Ahmarian is the first fully Upper Palaeolithic techno-cultural unit exclusively and undisputedly related to anatomically modern human populations. In order to better understand the potentially attractive features of the Early Ahmarian environmental context that supported its persistence for over 8,000 years, we carried out a decennial research program in Jordan and in the Dead Sea. This included (1) a geoscientific and archaeological survey program in the Wadi Sabra (Jordan) with a particular focus on excavations at the Early Ahmarian site of Al-Ansab 1 alongside the detailed analysis of Quaternary sediments from the same area and (2) palaeobotanical research based on Quaternary lake deposits from the Dead Sea. Our pollen data from the Dead Sea indicate slow, low frequency vegetational variation with expanding Artemisia steppe, from 60 to 20 ka BP (MIS 3-2). Here, we see a reciprocal assimilation of southern and northern Levantine vegetation zones thereby enhancing a long-lasting south-to-north steppe corridor. The same integration process accelerated about 40 ka ago, when forested areas retreated in the Lebanese Mountains. The process then extended to encompass an area from Southern Lebanon to

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Numerical modeling towards the sub-kilometer scale: The potential for regional reanalysis

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp... more &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;In recent years convection-permitting models are increasingly often used for retrospective climate studies. Besides the better reproduction of atmospheric processes, the increase in resolution allows for a more accurate representation of land-surface heterogeneities and thus a more realistic depiction of smaller scale characteristics. The work presented here investigates the potential benefits of higher model resolutions on the atmospheric state estimates in possible future regional reanalysis data sets.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Specifically, we employ the ICOsahedral Non-hydrostatic model ICON (the current operational NWP model of the German Meteorological Service DWD) in its Limited Area Mode (ICON-LAM) with a LETKF data assimilation framework.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br /&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Simulations are conducted for a free run (dynamical downscaling) and a data assimilation (DA) one for various horizontal resolutions from the operational 2.1 kilometers towards finer resolutions of 1 kilometer and below. In addition, different land surface data sets are used as lower boundary conditions in order to explore their impact under the chosen horizontal resolutions. These experiments are conducted for Central Europe and Germany for the month of June 2019 which includes several extreme events, e.g., heatwave, heavy precipitation.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;The presentation evaluates the simulations against non-assimilated observations for the free and DA experiments. The impact of the land-surface heterogeneity and resolution are quantified on both atmospheric and soil variables to account for possible feedback processes. Particular attention is given to the effects on the vertical atmospheric structure and precipitation generation.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Combining a pollen synthesis and climate simulations for spatial reconstructions of European climate using Bayesian modelling

Climate of the Past Discussions, 2018

Probabilistic spatial reconstructions of past climate states are valuable to quantitatively study... more Probabilistic spatial reconstructions of past climate states are valuable to quantitatively study the climate system under different forcing conditions because they combine the information contained in a proxy synthesis in a comprehensible product. Unfortunately, they are subject to a complex uncertainty structure due to complicated proxy-climate relations and sparse data, which makes interpolation between samples difficult. Bayesian hierarchical models feature promising properties to handle these issues like the possibility to include multiple sources of information and to quantify uncertainties in a statistically rigorous way. We present a Bayesian framework that combines a network of pollen samples with a spatial prior distribution estimated from a multi-model ensemble of climate simulations. The use of climate simulation output aims at a physically reasonable spatial interpolation of proxy data on a regional scale. To transfer the pollen data into (local) climate information, we apply a forward version of the probabilistic indicator taxa model. The Bayesian inference is performed using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods following a Metropolis-within-Gibbs strategy. We reconstruct mean temperature of the warmest and mean temperature of the coldest month during the mid-Holocene in Europe using a published pollen and macrofossil synthesis in combination with the Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project Phase III mid-Holocene ensemble. The output of our Bayesian model is a spatially distributed probability distribution that facilitates quantitative analyses which account for uncertainties. Our reconstruction performs well in cross-validation experiments and shows a reasonable degree of spatial smoothing. 1 Introduction Spatial or climate field reconstructions of past near surface climate states combine information from proxy samples, which are mostly localized, with a model for interpolation between those samples. They are valuable for comparisons of the state of the climate system under different external forcing conditions, because they produce a comprehensible product containing the joint information in a proxy synthesis. Thereby, spatial reconstructions are more suitable for many quantitative analyses of past climate than individual proxy records. Unfortunately, spatial reconstructions are subject to a complex uncertainty structure due to uncertainties in the proxy-climate relation and the sparseness of available proxy data which leads to additional interpolation uncertainties. Therefore, a meaningful reconstruction has to include these uncertainties (Tingley et al., 2012). A natural way to represent uncertainties in the proxy-climate relation are so called probabilistic transferfunctions (Ohlwein and Wahl, 2012). To

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An efficient model approach for very high resolution orographic precipitation

Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 2017

This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been th... more

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Evaluation of the Water Cycle in the European COSMO-REA6 Reanalysis Using GRACE

Water, 2017

Precipitation and evapotranspiration, and in particular the precipitation minus evapotranspiratio... more Precipitation and evapotranspiration, and in particular the precipitation minus evapotranspiration deficit (P − E), are climate variables that may be better represented in reanalyses based on numerical weather prediction (NWP) models than in other datasets. P − E provides essential information on the interaction of the atmosphere with the land surface, which is of fundamental importance for understanding climate change in response to anthropogenic impacts. However, the skill of models in closing the atmospheric-terrestrial water budget is limited. Here, total water storage estimates from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission are used in combination with discharge data for assessing the closure of the water budget in the recent high-resolution Consortium for Small-Scale Modelling 6-km Reanalysis (COSMO-REA6) while comparing to global reanalyses (Interim ECMWF Reanalysis (ERA-Interim), Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2)) and observation-based datasets (Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC), Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model (GLEAM)). All 26 major European river basins are included in this study and aggregated to 17 catchments. Discharge data are obtained from the Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC), and insufficiently long time series are extended by calibrating the monthly Génie Rural rainfall-runoff model (GR2M) against the existing discharge observations, subsequently generating consistent model discharge time series for the GRACE period. We find that for most catchments, COSMO-REA6 closes the water budget within the error estimates. In contrast, the global reanalyses underestimate P − E with up to 20 mm/month. For all models and catchments, short-term (below the seasonal timescale) variability of atmospheric terrestrial flux agrees well with GRACE and discharge data with correlations of about 0.6. Our large study area allows identifying regional patterns like negative trends of P − E in eastern Europe and positive trends in northwestern Europe.

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Evaluation of the MiKlip decadal prediction system using satellite based cloud products

Meteorologische Zeitschrift, 2016

A Survey of the Relationship between Climatic Heat Stress Indices and Fundamental Milk Components Considering Uncertainty

Climate, 2015

The main purpose of this study is to assess the relationship between four bioclimatic indices for... more The main purpose of this study is to assess the relationship between four bioclimatic indices for cattle (environmental stress, heat load, modified heat load, and respiratory rate predictor indices) and three main milk components (fat, protein, and milk yield) considering uncertainty. The climate parameters used to calculate the climate indices were taken from the NASA-Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications (NASA-MERRA) reanalysis from 2002 to 2010. Cow milk data were considered for the same period from April to September when the cows use the natural pasture. The study is based on a linear regression analysis using correlations as a summarizing diagnostic. Bootstrapping is used to represent uncertainty information in the confidence intervals. The main results identify an interesting relationship between the milk compounds and climate indices under all climate conditions. During spring, there are reasonably high correlations between the fat and protein concentrations vs. the climate indices, whereas there are insignificant dependencies between the milk yield and climate indices. During summer, the correlation between the fat and protein concentrations with the climate indices decreased in comparison with the spring results, whereas the correlation for the milk yield increased. This methodology is suggested for

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Diagnosis and Modelling of the Variability of Rainfall in West Africa Within the Impetus Project

In the meteorological sub-project of the multi-disciplinary IMPETUS project (&amp;amp;amp;amp... more In the meteorological sub-project of the multi-disciplinary IMPETUS project (&amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;An Integrated Approach to the Efficient Management of Scarce Water Resources in West Africa&amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;), one focus is on the diagnosis and modelling of the major rainfall producing weather systems in Benin and Morocco. Two other foci are on model sensitivity studies to determine the potential of seasonal rainfall forecasting for tropical

Ausgangslage

Klimavorhersage und Klimavorsorge, 2002

Klimabedingungen und ihre Folgen wurden in der Geschichte der Menschheit lange Zeit gleichsam sch... more Klimabedingungen und ihre Folgen wurden in der Geschichte der Menschheit lange Zeit gleichsam schicksalhaft als naturgegeben hingenommen, mit dem Ergebnis, dass der menschlichen Gesellschaft hier allenfalls eine passive Rolle zugeschrieben wurde. Dies lässt sich durch die schwer beschreibbare Dynamik und Komplexität von Klimaprozessen erklaren. Mit der als immer wahrscheinlicher erachteten aktiven Rolle des Menschen im Klimasystem und der Ableitung entsprechender zukünftiger Klimaszenarien verliert der Mensch nunmehr seine bislang in Anspruch genommene „Unschuld“. 1m Unterschied zu den natürlich eingetretenen Klimaveränderungen der historischen Vergangenheit sind mittlerweile sowohl Ursachen als auch Reaktionen in einen zu legitimierenden Handlungszusamrnenhang gerückt. Allerdings wird die Diskussion über einen möglicherweise zu befürchtenden Klimawandel und seine Bedeutung für die Menschheit insgesamt sowie für einzelne Regionen in Wissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit hoch kontrovers und zum Teil emotional geführt.

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