Vol. 69, No. 3 * Pages 151–212 * July 2024

Ensemble climate simulations and instantaneous statistics calculated across the ensemble characterize correctly the plethora of potential states of the climate system under the given forcings in every time instant after a certain convergence time. The mathematical concept of this is described by the theory of snapshot attractors. In this way, the change in any quantity under a changing climate can be determined more precisely compared to methods using temporal statistics. This paper explores the snapshot attractor’s role in the internal variability of climate, demonstrating the application of the snapshot approach by using ensemble climate simulations, and its advantages over temporal methods on the example of the Arctic Oscillation and the related temperature anomalies.

The analysis of tropical cyclones with microwave satellite measurements is a common method in the tropical meteorology, supplementing the ’classical’ satellite channels (infrared, visible). Nowadays, many polar orbiting satellites have microwave sensors that provide high quality measurements, however, mostly only twice a day. These data facilitate the analysis of the cyclone’s structure and strength: for example, the warm core, the cloudiness at different atmospheric levels, the precipitation and the wind speed can be determined. In this article, we present the use of the microwave products in case of the medicanes with an example from October 2022.

While 2022 was the year of the historic drought, 2023 became memorable for the violent storms. At the beginning of the year, changes started in the atmosphere, the cyclone activity became more intense. The wind storms already in the spring caused considerable damage in the infrastructure and agriculture. In the summer of 2023, the extreme weather continued with mesoscale convective systems, severe winds and hail storms. The summer thunderstorm season reached its summit with a particularly heavy storm on August 5, but even on November 6 a smaller supercell formed at Lake Balaton. The winter started with a wet snowfall case in early December, causing disruptions to the electrical grid, traffic and infrastructure. This study presents the meteorological background of the extreme weather situations in 2023.

Developing effective greenhouse gas emission reduction strategies and monitoring compliance with  commitments are not feasible without an adequate measurement network. The European Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) was established in 2015. Hungary joined in 2022, and the first monitoring station in Hungary was officially ICOS-labelled in May 2024. This paper reviews the establishment, structure, and operation of ICOS, as well as the participation of Hungary in the organization.

Climate change has become a central issue in our lives as its effects are increasingly felt around the world. In this study, we focused on how changes in cloud cover are related to the changing climate system and weather. Our research aims to analyse changes in cloud cover focusing on the Central European region over the period 1983–2022 using data from the ERA5 reanalysis database. Statistical analyses were performed focusing on regional and seasonal variations. The results were also compared with global irradiance values from the HuClim database. The results show that on average the cloud cover is decreasing. However, when analysing the spatial variations, we found that there are areas where the proportion of cloud cover is increasing due to the influence of changing lar ge-scale motion systems.