Climate Change In Switzerland Research Articles

Les barrières à la mise en œuvre des politiques d’adaptation au changement climatique: le cas de la Suisse

Abstract: The implementation of climate change adaptation polices has barely occurred in developed countries. This paper examines to what extent the perceptions of political actors might hinder the development of adaptation policies. We study the Swiss case using computer aided textual analysis. Our results demonstrate that adaptation is still not perceived as an important dimension of climate change policy. Decision makers do not perceive links between adaptation, the Swiss economy and the energy supply. Adaptation is mainly considered an issue for developing countries and not as a way to reduce the impacts of climate change in Switzerland. Right‐wing parties tend to consider adaptation a secondary issue and are more likely than those to the left to object to the formulation or the implementation of public measures.

The effects of climate change in Switzerland 1969–1996 on airborne pollen quantities from hazel, birch and grass

Records of different pollen were used to examine associations with weather parameters for the three different pollen: hazel (Corylus sp.), birch (Betula sp.) and grass (Poaceae). As air temperature is expected to rise according to the forecasts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) and as this factor has a great potential to affect the development of plants, the records of different pollen were used to understand possible associations. The analysis of weather data for the studied period showed a significant increase in the annual mean temperature. From an aerobiology point of view it is most important to note that the temperature increase in winter (December) becomes most evident. As a consequence of this, hazel started earlier to flower. The flowering period which was originally in March thus shifted to January and February. Therefore the time period for hay fever patients shifted also partly to the traditional winter period. The starting season for birch and grass was not that much influenced by the temperature shift. However, regarding these two plants I also found that the wanner the weather preceding the flower period, the earlier the plants start to emit pollen. The total pollen count increased for the observed time period for all three investigated taxa. The reason for this increase is not obvious, but it is conceivable that the observed temperature rise may exert an influence. The observed pollen count increase goes hand in hand with the observed increase in pollen allergies. However, a direct link could not be ascertained yet. The increase of temperature and the corresponding shift of the flowering time of plants whose pollen are of special interest in this connection has a medical significance since the period for hay fever sufferers becomes longer and can nowadays last from January (starting with hazel) until September (ending with mugwort) in Switzerland. In addition, the analysis of weather data showed that the amount of precipitation did not change significantly over the observed time period, although precipitation increased slightly. A strong negative correlation between pollen number and the amount of precipitation was especially found for birch and grass.

An analysis of regional climate change in Switzerland

An analysis of daily climatological data covering the period from 1901 to 1992 for four locations in Switzerland (Zurich, Lugano, Davos, and Santis) has been made. The study has highlighted the fact that climate change this century is characterized by increases in minimum temperatures of about 2 K, a more modest increase in maximum temperatures (in some instances a decrease of maxima in the latter part of the record), little trend in the precipitation data, and a general decrease of sunshine duration through to the mid 1980s. The interannual variability is generally large, and filtering of the data to remove high-frequency noise shows that the regional climate undergoes a series of fluctuations of between 8 and 20 years' duration. The temperature change over this century is of greater magnitude than the global temperature changes published in the literature, reflecting an amplification of the global signal in the Alpine region; warming has been most intense in the 1940s, followed by the 1980s; the cooling which intervened from the 1950s to the late 1970s was not sufficient to offset the warming in the middle of the century. Pressure statistics have been compiled as a means of providing a link between the regional-scale climatological variables and the synoptic, supra-regional scale. These statistics show that pressure also exhibits a number of decadal-scale fluctuations, with the appearance of a new and anomalous behavior in the 1980s; in this decade, pressure reaches annual average values far higher than at other times this century. The pressure field is well correlated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) Index for distinct periods of the record (1931–1950 and 1971–1990) and is almost decorrelated from the NAO Index for the other decades of the century; this is indicative of transition from one climatic regime to another, dominated by zonal flow when the correlation with the NAO Index is high. In the 1980s, when zonal flow over the North Atlantic is strong, episodes of persistent, anomalously high pressures (blocking highs) are seen to occur over Switzerland, particularly during the winter season. The difference between the zonal and non-zonal regimes is particularly marked between the decade of the 1950s and that of the 1980s. The impact of this change between the 1950s and the 1980s on a number of climatological variables has been investigated statistically in order to provide an illustration of the manner in which changes in synoptic regimes (i.e., ‘climate change’) impacts upon climate characteristics on a regional scale. The analysis shows that temperature, precipitation, snow depth, and sunshine duration are indeed sensitive to large-scale influences; not only can yearly mean changes be quantified, but also seasonal and monthly fluctuations.