For the use of the ÖKS15 climate change simulations and the corresponding gridded observation datasets.
The aim of this document is to provide assistance for the optimal use of the climate scenarios produced in the project "ÖKS15-Climate Scenarios for Austria". These basic data are freely accessible via the CCCA Data Center for Climate and Climate Impact Research. On the one hand, this is intended to demonstrate the resilience of this data set so that work based on it can be made more trustworthy. On the other hand, the STARC-Impact project team (Barbara Chimani, Christoph Matulla, Josef Eitzinger, Johann Hiebl, Michael Hofstätter, Gerhard Kubu, Douglas Maraun, Thomas Mendlik, Theresa Schellander-Gorgas, and Sabina Thaler) would also like to provide general information on climate modeling in this document, justifying the limits of applicability of the datasets studied, making them understandable to the data user, and offering assistance with recurring questions regarding the use of model and observational data.
The first part of the document provides general information on climate models, downscaling methods, and analyses. In the second part, the results of the evaluation of the ÖKS15 model data, as well as the gridded observational data used in the process, can be found. Information on the methods used to generate the data can be found in the ÖKS15 final report (Chimani et al., 2016). In the third part, collected questions from the field are summarized and answered.
The questionnaire resulted from the internet survey conducted in the project, as well as the first project workshop. Furthermore, it was decided to set up a WIKI page at the CCCA, on which difficulties in one or the other model run used in ÖKS15 that become known in the course of time should be found in the future.