Climate variability and change over Uzbekistan – an analysis based on high resolution CHELSA data

Climate change and variability represent a major risk for the Central Asian economies, particularly for the agriculture and energy sectors. A detailed analysis of recent climatic changes is required in order to assess their impact. However, the observational network in Central Asia has significantly degraded after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, especially in the vulnerable high mountain regions (Unger-Shayesteh et al. 2013). Currently, the hydro-meteorological network of Uzhydromet is being modernized. Gridded climate data with high resolution represent a great opportunity to overcome these data related challenges, since they are freely available to all scientists andpractitioners and enable a cross-border monitoring of climatic conditions. Here the authors introduce the CHELSA (“Climatologies at high resolution for the earth’s land surface areas“) data set, which provides monthly data of precipitation and temperature or the entire globe at a resolution of 1*1 km for the period 1979-2013. The data set is evaluated against 20 stations across Uzbekistan. The authors show that CHELSA agrees in most cases with station observations, which is manifested in small deviations of mean seasonal temperature and precipitation sums. Further, temperature and precipitation trends as well as the relationship with large-scale atmospheric circulation modes, such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation, are well represented by the CHELSA data set. The authors conclude, that CHELSA is a reasonable basis for the investigation of climate variability and change in Central Asia.