2025 Reports

Modelling the Summertime Climate of Vienna

Goler, Robert A.; Žuvela-Aloise, Maja; Hollósi, Brigitta

The urban climate model MUKLIMO_3 is used to simulate the historical, current and future heat load of Vienna, the capital city of Austria. The historical climate is based on land use and land cover data from 1985 and 2005. The future climate is based on EURO-CORDEX climate projections of temperature for the two emission scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. Land use and land cover changes are shown to result in changes of up to ±10 summer days per year, where the replacement of parks, water bodies, and other natural surfaces with roads, residential and industrial buildings leading to increases in the heat load and vice versa. Keeping the land use constant but including the effect of climate change shows that the greatest increase in the number of summer days is expected at the end of the 21st century for the RCP8.5 scenario.