125
W. Hagg et al.: Climate and glacier uctuations in the Bavarian Alps in the past 120 years
2012
provides a very valuable and rare high altitude da-
taset, measured at a distance of 0.5–2.4 km from
the three glaciers. Not only standard meteorological
data is measured, but also snow height at a location
directly on Nördlicher Schneeferner (2600 m a.s.l.).
A meteorological station at Watzmannhaus (1923 m
a.s.l.) in the Berchtesgaden Alps was in operation
from 1948-1953, but no long-term series of a moun-
tain station exists. The closest valley stations with a
long record are those in Schönau (616 m a.s.l., 7–10
km northeast of the glaciers, 1948-1998) and in Bad
Reichenhall (470 m a.s.l., 17 km north, 1945–2006).
Salzburg airport (450 m a.s.l., 25 km north) has a
record back to 1842.
3 Methods
3.1 Analysis of meteorological records
For Zugspitze station, the DWD has produced
homogenized monthly series of temperature and
precipitation to account for location changes of the
sensors (koeltZsCHy 2008, pers. comm.). This series
deviates from the raw data mainly in the rst half of
the 20th century. The long-term record of Salzburg
airport was homogenized within the HISTALP (his-
torical instrumental climatological surface time se-
ries of the Greater Alpine Region) project, where a
total of 557 series was gap-lled and outlier corrected
(auer et al. 2007). Since the whole time series of
glacier variations should be correlated with climatic
conditions, data from Salzburg airport had to be used
for this purpose. To test its representativeness for
the glacier locations, correlation coefcients between
Salzburg and Bad Reichenhall have been determined
(Fig. 5). Since the Schönau data series is interrupted
by numerous gaps, it was omitted from this analysis.
There is a strong correlation between temperatures,
which can be expected over a horizontal distance of
17 km. Even winter precipitation, which has a strong-
er spatial variation than air temperature, shows a dis-
tinct interdependence. Temperature and precipitation
trends were derived by linear regression analysis.
Glacier changes in the Wetterstein group be-
tween 1892 and 1949 were correlated with the climate
record from Zugspitze, although this station began
operation only in 1901. The remaining 8 years were
assumed to have the same average meteorological
conditions as the 49 years with observations. This is
at least conrmed by data of Hohenpeißenberg me-
teorological station, located in the alpine foothills
about 40 km north of Zugspitze. Here, the summer
(5–9) mean temperature 1892–1901 and 1901–1949 is
Fig. 4: Detail from the 1:10’000 map “Zugspitze” by FinSterWalder and Jäger (1892) (© Bavarian State Ofce for Survey-
ing and Geoinformation)
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