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Changing climate in Hungary and trends in the annual number of heat stress days

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Abstract

Global climate change can have serious direct effects on animal health and production through heat stress. In Hungary, the number of heat stress days per year (YNHD), i.e., days when the temperature humidity index (THI) is above a specific comfort threshold, has increased in recent years based on observed meteorological data. Between 1973 and 2008, the countrywide average increase in YNHD was 4.1% per year. Climate scenarios based on regional climate models (RCM) were used to predict possible changes in YNHD for the near future (2021–2050) relative to the reference period (1961–1990). This comparison shows that, in Hungary, the 30-year mean of YNHD is expected to increase by between 1 and 27 days, depending on the RCM used. Half of the scenarios investigated in this study predicted that, in large parts of Hungary, YNHD will increase by at least 1 week. However, the increase observed in the past, and that predicted for the near future, is spatially heterogeneous, and areas that currently have large cattle populations are expected to be affected more severely than other regions.

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Acknowledgments

In memory of Prof. Zsolt Harnos, who initiated our work. Observation-based meteorological data were obtained from the National Climatic Data Center. Regional climate model based data (except scenario No. 7) the ENSEMBLES data were used in this work funded by the EU FP6 Integrated Project ENSEMBLES (Contract number 505539) whose support is gratefully acknowledged. Research leading to results of scenario No. 7 has been supported by the CECILIA project of the European Union Nr. 6 program (contract no. GOCE-037005).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Adaptation to Climate Change Research Group, Hungarian Academy of Sciences–Corvinus University Budapest (HAS-CUB), Villányi út 29-43, 1118, Budapest, Hungary

    Norbert Solymosi, Csaba Torma, Anikó Kern & Jenő Reiczigel

  2. Department of Meteorology, Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány sétány 1/A, 1117, Budapest, Hungary

    Csaba Torma, Anikó Kern & Zoltán Barcza

  3. Faculty of Veterinary Science, Szent István University, István u. 2, 1078, Budapest, Hungary

    Ákos Maróti-Agóts, László Könyves & Jenő Reiczigel

  4. Department of Population Medicine, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada

    Olaf Berke

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  1. Norbert Solymosi
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Solymosi, N., Torma, C., Kern, A. et al. Changing climate in Hungary and trends in the annual number of heat stress days. Int J Biometeorol 54, 423–431 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-009-0293-5

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