„Klimaszenarien.AT“ - a strategy to new national climate scenarios in Austria

Klimaszenarien.AT is an initiative started by 8 scientific and climate service partners in Austria with the aim of developing new national climate scenarios for Austria until 2026 („ÖKS26“).  The main goal is to consider both, a sound scientific basis at the latest state of research and users’ specific requirements concerning climate data and information. Activities of the initiative are, to a large part, carried out in funded research projects.

The workplan of Klimaszenarien.AT roughly defines two stages: The first phase (2021-2025) focuses on the generation of the regional climate scenario data , while the second phase (2023-2026) is dedicated to distillation and communication of climate information for stakeholders and users.

Stage one uses multiple sources of climate projection and reference data from global to regional scales and addresses specific research topics, such as the understanding of atmospheric processes or the linkage of large- and regional-scale impacts of climate change, with a special focus on mountainous areas.

Stage two focuses on the construction of climate information for various user contexts, in terms of main statements and on applicable formats for visualization and provision of the climate information. The initiative aims at serving the principle of use: The derived climate information shall not only be „useful“, i.e. reliable and relevant, but also „useable“, i.e. findable and accessible and, finally, „used“ by public, media, decision-makers and advanced users.  Hence, also the experiences of users with the predecessor, the Austrian „ÖKS15“ scenarios, are gathered within the framework of a comprehensive stakeholder process.

The two phases are closely related to each other and overlap in time. The goal of this concept is that the final outputs, i.e. the generic scenario data as well as the information and products derived therefrom, are understood as the fruit of collaborative efforts by the various actors.

The process of generating „ÖKS26“ is further related to a number of international activities, such as the (EURO-)CORDEX project and the D-A-CH-scenario project. The latter is a cooperation of the national weather services DWD (D), GeoSphere Austria (A) and MeteoSwiss (CH) with the aim to harmonize the new generations of national climate scenarios to the greatest possible extent and to avoid transborder inconsistencies.