SPARTACUS version 3: An improved gridded climate dataset for Austria at daily resolution

SPARTACUS (Spatial Climate Observation Dataset for Austria) version 3 is the latest iteration of the main gridded dataset used by Geosphere Austria for operational climate monitoring. It provides daily values of temperature (mean, minimum, and maximum), precipitation sum, and sunshine duration at 1 km resolution for the territory of Austria and for selected surrounding regions (catchment areas of relevant rivers), covering the period from 1961 to the present. SPARTACUS is based solely on in-situ measurements of the Austrian network and of neighboring countries, which are interpolated by adapting statistical methods specifically developed for mountainous regions (e.g., Frei, 2014).

The most important addition with respect to the previous version (v2.1) is the calculation of the actual daily mean temperature (based on 24 hourly measurements) that replaces the arithmetic averages of maximum and minimum temperature. For the years preceding the automation of the measurements (when only three measurements per day are available) station-specific corrections were calculated by means of multi-linear regression to take into account a network-wide change of the observation times that took place in 1971 (Hiebl et al., 2025). In general, the temporal homogeneity of the input data has improved. Moreover, the number of ingested stations has been increased.

We demonstrate the improved suitability of the new version for climate‑change analyses compared to its predecessor (with particular focus on elevation-dependent climate change), examine the remaining issues, and offer an outlook on forthcoming developments.

 

References:

Frei, C. (2014), Interpolation of temperature in a mountainous region using nonlinear profiles and non-Euclidean distances. Int. J. Climatol., 34: 1585-1605. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.3786

Hiebl, J., Rohrböck, A., and Haslinger, K. (2025), Correcting breaks in temperature and humidity observations: Implications for climate variability analysis in Austria. Int. J. Climatol., e70214. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.70214