Future Climate of the European Alps

The global climate is currently warming and this trend is expected to continue towards an even warmer world, associated partly with drastic shifts in precipitation regimes (IPCC 2007). While the global temperature has roughly been warming by 0.6°C (±0.2°C) during the 20th century (IPCC 2001), the land masses have had a higher temperature increase during the same period, and some areas such as the Alps showed an exceptionally high warming trend, with increases reaching 1.7°C in some regions (Rebetez 2006, Rebetez & Reinhard 2008). Here, we report on the current state of the art in climate model projections for the Alps, with an outlook to the soon available 5th IPCC assessment report.