Search

The onset of periods with very high or low air temperatures has aroused general interest for a long time, which is understandable since it has many dangerous effects directly affecting humans. Such perilous climatic phenomena include exceptionally cold and exceptionally warm months, which this study investigates for all Europe and for its five physico‐geographic regions over the 190‐year period of 1831–2020. Therefore, the research in this paper includes two periods characteristic of the history of climate – the late Little Ice Age (LIA) and present‐day warming. The studies are based on average monthly air temperature values from 40 weather stations in Europe. In this paper, exceptionally cold months (ECMs) or exceptionally warm months (EWMs) are considered to have occurred when the average air temperature at a station differed from the respective long‐term average by at least two standard deviations. The highlights of the study include the identification of a drop in the number of ECMs by 20 over the entire 190‐year period, and a highly statistically significant increase in EWMs by 44 between 1980 and 2020. These changes proceeded with different intensities from one physico‐geographic region of Europe to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time-varying relationships between two atmospheric oscillation modes and precipitation (rainfall and snow) in the western portion of the Carpathian Mountains and the northern part of the Pannonian Plain are investigated in this paper. The Arctic Oscillation (AO) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) modes were used to explain the intra-annual variability of monthly rainfall totals and new snow over a 36-year period (1981-2017) observed at a dense network of 177 rain gauges and 33 snow rods located throughout the investigated area, respectively. The Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) was deployed as a band-pass fllter to quantify the spectral coherence and attribution (based on signal-to-noise ratio) of the NAO and AO modes to the precipitation variability. The temporal and spatial patterns of NAO and AO-related signal variance in monthly rainfall totals and fresh snowpack were evaluated on seasonal and monthly bases. The NAO mode explained the major historically observed snow calamities, such as the snowy cold spell of January 1985 that hit central and southern Europe, bringing heavy snowfall to the investigated region and many other parts of Europe. This event was the beginning of a prolonged cold wave in Europe, with extremely low air temperatures across the continent. Our analyses showed that the AO mode appears to have only a limited effect on the overall variability of new snowpack in late winter. The attribution of NAO and AO modes to the variability of monthly rainfall totals is less pronounced compared to new snowpack. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The occurrence of long-lasting severe heat stress, such as in July–August 2003, July 2010, or in April–May 2018 has been one of the biggest meteorological threats in Europe in recent years. The paper focuses on the biometeorological and mortality effects of the hot June that was observed in Central Europe in 2019. The basis of the study was hourly and daily Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) values at meteorological stations in Poland for June 2019. The average monthly air temperature and UTCI values from 1951 to 2018 were analysed as background. Grosswetterlagen calendar of atmospheric circulation was used to assess synoptic conditions of heat wave. Several heat strain measures were applied : net heat storage (S), modelled heart rate (HR), sultriness (HSI), and UTCI index. Actual total mortality (TM) and modelled strong heat-related mortality (SHRM) were taken as indicators of biometeorological consequences of the hot June in 2019. The results indicate that prolonged persistence of unusually warm weather in June 2019 was determined by the synoptic conditions occurring over the European region and causing advection of tropical air. They led to the emergence of heat waves causing 10% increase in TM and 5 times bigger SHRM then in preceding 10 years. Such increase in SHRM was an effect of overheating and overload of circulatory system of human organism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary climate warming is a key problem faced not only by scientists, but also all by humanity because, as is shown by the experience of recent years, it has multiple environmental, economic and biometeorological implications. In this paper, the authors identify the magnitude of annual and seasonal temperature changes in Europe and its immediate surroundings on the basis of data from 210 weather stations from 1951 to 2020. An analysis of temperatures in the 70-year period shows that air temperature has continued to grow linearly in Europe since 1985. The rate of temperature rise in three seasons of the year, namely winter, spring and summer, does not differ greatly. The highest growth over the 1985–2020 timespan was recorded in spring and the lowest in autumn—0.061 °C/year and 0.045 °C/year, respectively. In winter, the rise in temperature should be considered the least steady, as opposed to the summer when it displays the greatest stability. Overall, the warming intensifies towards the north-east of the continent. Such a strong gradient of change is especially perceivable in winter and spring, and is also marked in autumn. The opposite is true in summer, when it increases towards the south and south-west. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the paper was the determination of the circulation conditions of occurrence of strong and very strong frost in Central Europe. A frost day was defined as a day with the minimum temperature lower than 0 °C and maximum temperature higher than 0 °C. Moreover, a division of frost was performed in terms of value of minimum temperature, resulting in the designation of mild frost (up to − 2.0 °C), moderate frost (from − 2.1 to − 4 °C), strong frost (from − 4.1 to − 6 °C) and very strong frost (< − 6 °C). The study was based on data from the years 1966–2015 from the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management—National Research Institute, Deutscher Wetterdienst and National Center for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR). The analysis of baric conditions employed values of pressure at sea level, height of isobaric surface of 500 hPa and air temperature at a level of 850 hPa, as well as their anomalies. The spatial analysis showed that the number of frost days in spring and autumn increased from the west to the east of Central Europe. A decrease in the number of frost days, however, is observed over the prevailing area. Average conditions favouring the occurrence of strong and very strong frost both in spring and autumn were related to higher than average pressure at sea level over the prevailing area of the Euro-Atlantic sector. Such baric conditions caused advections of cool air masses from the northern sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of this paper is to derive a method for a daily gross primary production (GPP) product over Europe and Africa taking the full advantage of the SEVIRI/MSG satellite products from the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) sensors delivered from the Satellite Application Facility for Land Surface Analysis (LSA SAF) system. Special attention is paid to model the daily GPP response from an optimized Montheith's light use efficiency model under dry conditions by controlling water shortage limitations from the actual evapotranspiration and the potential evapotranspiration (PET). The PET was parameterized using the mean daily air temperature at 2 m ( T a ) from ERA-Interim data. The GPP product (MSG GPP) was produced for 2012 and assessed by direct site-level comparison with GPP from eddy covariance data (EC GPP). MSG GPP presents relative bias errors lower than 40% for the most forest vegetation types with a high agreement ( r > 0.7) when compared with EC GPP. For drylands, MSG GPP reproduces the seasonal variations related to water limitation in a good agreement with site level GPP estimates (RMSE = 2.11 g m −2 day −1 ; MBE = −0.63 g m −2 day −1 ), especially for the dry season. A consistency analysis against other GPP satellite products (MOD17A2 and FLUXCOM) reveals a high consistency among products (RMSD < 1.5 g m −2 day −1 ) over Europe, North and South Africa. The major GPP disagreement arises over moist biomes in central Africa (RMSD > 3.0 g m −2 day −1 ) and over dry biomes with MSG GPP estimates lower than FLUXCOM (MBD up to −3.0 g m −2 day −1 ). This newly derived product has the potential for analysing spatial patterns and temporal dynamics of GPP at the MSG spatial resolutions on a daily basis allowing to better capture the GPP dynamics and magnitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparison of principal component (PC) regression and regularized expectation maximization (RegEM) to reconstruct European summer and winter surface air temperature over the past millennium. Reconstruction is performed within a surrogate climate using the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Climate System Model (CSM) 1.4 and the climate model ECHO-G 4, assuming different white and red noise scenarios to define the distortion of pseudoproxy series. We show how sensitivity tests lead to valuable “a priori” information that provides a basis for improving real world proxy reconstructions. Our results emphasize the need to carefully test and evaluate reconstruction techniques with respect to the temporal resolution and the spatial scale they are applied to. Furthermore, we demonstrate that uncertainties inherent to the predictand and predictor data have to be more rigorously taken into account. The comparison of the two statistical techniques, in the specific experimental setting presented here, indicates that more skilful results are achieved with RegEM as low frequency variability is better preserved. We further detect seasonal differences in reconstruction skill for the continental scale, as e.g. the target temperature average is more adequately reconstructed for summer than for winter. For the specific predictor network given in this paper, both techniques underestimate the target temperature variations to an increasing extent as more noise is added to the signal, albeit RegEM less than with PC regression. We conclude that climate field reconstruction techniques can be improved and need to be further optimized in future applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to present the development and evaluation of neural network based identification algorithms for the prediction of outdoor air temperature using acquired data from four European cities (Ancona – Italy, Chania – Greece, Granada – Spain and Mollet – Spain). Different neural network topologies (feed forward, cascade and elman) have been tested to identify the most suitable for each city. The efficiency of the prediction is validated by comparing predicted and measured outdoor air temperature. Furthermore, statistical tools such as R 2 , and root mean square error (rmse) are used to evaluate the annual performance of the neural network. The comparison of measured and predicted outdoor air temperature ( R 2 > 0.9, rmse <2 °C) confirms the accurate training of the neural network for all four European cities. All work has been contacted using Matlab's environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) exhibited a marked eastward shift in the mid-1970s. Observations show that the extreme weather events in Europe have emerged frequently in the past decades. In this paper, based upon the daily NAO index, we have calculated the frequency of in-situ NAO events in winter during 1950-2011 by defining the Eastern-type NAO (ENAO) and Western-type NAO (WNAO) events according to its position at the east (west) of 10°W. Then, the composites of the blocking frequency, temperature and precipitation anomalies for different types of NAO events are performed. Results show that the frequency of Euro-Atlantic blocking events is distributed along the northwest-southeast (southwest-northeast) direction for the negative (positive) phase. Two blocking action centers in Greenland and European continent are observed during the negative phase while one blocking action center over south Europe is seen for the positive phase. The action center of blocking events tends to shift eastward as the NAO is shifted toward the European continent. Moreover, the eastern-type negative phase (ENAO) events are followed by a sharp decline of surface air temperature over Europe (especially in central, east, and south Europe), which have a wider and stronger impact on the weather over European continent than the western-type negative phase (WNAO) events do. A doublebranched structure of positive precipitation anomalies is seen for the negative phase event, besides strong positive precipitation anomalies over south Europe for ENAO event. The eastern-type and western-type positive phase (ENAO and WNAO) can lead to warming over Europe. A single-branched positive precipitation anomaly dominant in central and north Europe is seen for positive phase events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europe and in particular its southern part are expected to undergo serious climate changes during summer in response to anthropogenic forcing, with large surface warming and decrease in precipitation. Yet, serious uncertainties remain, especially over central and western Europe. Several mechanisms have been suggested to be important in that context but their relative importance and possible interplays are still not well understood. In this paper, the role of soil-atmosphere interactions, cloud-temperature interactions and land-sea warming contrast in summer European climate change and how they interact are analyzed. Models for which evapotranspiration is strongly limited by soil moisture in the present climate are found to tend to simulate larger future decrease in evapotranspiration. Models characterized by stronger present-day anti-correlation between cloud cover and temperature over land tend to simulate larger future decrease in cloud cover. Large model-to-model differences regarding land-sea warming contrast and its impacts are also found. Warming over land is expected to be larger than warming over sea, leading to a decrease in continental relative humidity and precipitation because of the discrepancy between the change in atmospheric moisture capacity over land and the change in specific humidity. Yet, it is not true for all the models over our domain of interest. Models in which evapotranspiration is not limited by soil moisture and with a weak present-day anti-correlation between cloud cover and temperature tend to simulate smaller land surface warming. In these models, change in specific humidity over land is therefore able to match the continental increase in moisture capacity, which leads to virtually no change in continental relative humidity and smaller precipitation change. Because of the physical links that exist between the response to anthropogenic forcing of important impact-related climate variables and the way some mechanisms are simulated in the context of present-day variability, this study suggests some potentially useful metrics to reduce summer European climate change uncertainties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional climate change affects the state of inland water bodies and their water balance, which is determined by a number of hydrometeorological and hydrogeological factors. An integral characteristic of changes in the water balance is the behavior of the level of lakes and reservoirs, which not only largely determines the physical and ecological state of water bodies, but also significantly affects the coastal infrastructure and socio-economic development of the region. This paper investigates the interannual variability of the level of the Ladoga and Onega lakes, the largest lakes in Europe located in the northwest of Russia, according to satellite altimetry data for 1993–2020. For this purpose, we used three specialized altimetry databases: DAHITI, G-REALM, and HYDROWEB. Water level data from these altimetry databases were compared with in-situ records at water level gauge stations. Information on air temperature (1945–2019) and precipitation (1966–2019) acquired at three meteostations located at Ladoga and Onega lakes was used to investigate interannual trends in the regional climate change. Finally, we discuss the potential impact of the lake level rise and regional climate warming on the infrastructure and operability of railways in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on exceptionally hot summers (EHS) as a manifestation of contemporary climate warming. The study identifies EHS occurrences in Central and Eastern Europe and describes the characteristic features of the region's thermal conditions. Average air temperatures in June, July and August were considered, as well as the number of days with maximum temperatures exceeding 25, 30 and 35 °C, and with a minimum temperature greater than >20 °C, as recorded at 59 weather stations in 1951-2010. Extremely hot summers are defined as having an average temperature equal to or greater than the long-term average plus 2 SD. A calendar of EHSs was compiled and their spatial extent identified. The region experienced 12 EHSs, which occurred in a given year at 5 % or more stations (1972, 1981, 1988, 1992, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007 and 2010). The EHS frequency of occurrence was found to be clearly on an increase. Indeed, only one EHS occurred during the first 30 years, but these occurred five times during the last 10 years of the study period. Their geographical extent varied both in terms of location and size. EHSs were observed at 57 out of the total of 59 weather stations in the study (the exceptions were Pecora and Cluj). The average air temperature of EHSs tended to exceed the relevant long-term average by 2-4 °C. The summer of 2010 was among the hottest (temperature anomaly 5.5-6 °C) and spatially largest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a changing climate, it is likely that precipitation patterns will experience shifts in amount and seasonality, with a tendency towards increased drought in many parts of Europe. In order to investigate what could be some of the feedbacks of dry conditions on temperature, this paper has investigated close to 30 European locations to assess the influence of observed dry summer days on daily maximum temperature ( Tmax) as well as a clustering of rainless days, and finally the temperature impact related to drought conditions as defined by the Standardized Precipitation Index. The results show that for the three main European climatic regions investigated ('Mediterranean', 'Maritime', 'Continental'), the influence of rainless days is discernible, with an average difference between mean summer Tmax and Tmax during rainless days only of up to 1.5 °C. A further aim of the study is to determine whether recent shifts in the occurrence of rainless days during the summer have a bearing on temperature trends. Results show that shifts in rainless days explain only a fraction of the observed temperature change at the locations studied, thereby hinting that the enhanced greenhouse effect remains the dominant mechanism for temperature change. Finally, using a regional climate model, very preliminary insight into a 'greenhouse climate' highlights the fact that changes in dry conditions seem to confirm the findings for current climate, i.e. they account for only a fraction of the increase in temperatures. Copyright © 2012 Royal Meteorological Society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, subjects such as eco-design requirements, product rating or code compliance with regard to energy efficiency are expanding towards a pan-European level. This leads to the necessity of defining zones within the European region, which share common climatic characteristics and will further facilitate the quick estimation of building energy performance. Towards this direction stands the current paper; it presents an approach for defining climatic zones in Europe on the basis of the amount of heating and cooling degree days. It is applied for the climate classification of selected European cities and is compared with the conventional scheme based solely on heating degree days. Since the approach is orientated mainly towards the assessment of building energy performance, its outcomes are evaluated with regard to the actual heating and cooling energy needs of a reference building unit with office use located in representative cities of the proposed climatic zones and facing the four cardinal orientations. The classification of climatic zones on the basis of both heating and cooling degree days leads to more realistic results, since nowadays cooling needs form a substantial part of the energy balance of the building, especially in the Mediterranean regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A few concurrent and/or counteracting factors (increase of average air temperature, rainfall shortage, drought, CO2 enrichment, ozone, nitrogen fertilization, sulphate deposition) drive today the soil-tree-atmosphere relationships in the Mediterranean area. Radial stem growth measured within the ICPForests level II Italian network provides a sensitive response to these occurrences. Climate fluctuations and repeated anomalous seasons or extreme events are the major evidences of the change in progress. The 2003 heat wave is the main event occurred in this decade over large part of Europe. In Italy, it provoked a marked water deficit coupled to high air temperature, which resulted in a heavy water stress. The growth performance in different forest types was analyzed in this paper: growth rate in 2000-2004, compared with 1997- 1999, showed reductions up to 50% on half of the plots examined. Most of them were: (i) in northern-central Italy within the southern continental border of the climatic deviation; (ii) at low elevation, which is more sensitive to high air temperature and drought; (iii) made up of deciduous broadleaved forests (beech and oaks), i.e., species showing growth effects also in the following year. Over the time-window 2005-2009, a significant growth decrease was vice-versa detected within the coniferous spruce forests located at medium- high elevation in the Alps. Repeated seasonal deviations in temperature and rainfall were recorded in the Alps in 2005-2009. Climate effects at local scale were examined in a site where two oak species with a different auto-ecology (sessile oak and Turkey oak) grow together. The on-going change produced heavy mortality and reduced the growth of the more demanding and less drought-tolerant sessile oak; in a few years Turkey oak became prevailing in the stand composition and structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mountains are highly sensitive to the effects of climate change, including extreme short- and long-term weather phenomena. Therefore, in spite of relatively high annual precipitation totals, mountains might become endangered by droughts. The paper presents drought trends in the Polish Carpathians located in Central Europe. Data from the period 1991–2020 from 12 meteorological stations located in various vertical climate zones of the mountains were used to define drought conditions using the following indices: Standardized Precipitation (SPI), Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration (SPEI), Relative Precipitation (RPI) and Sielianinov. Additionally, four forest drought indices were used in order to estimate the impact of drought on beech as a typical Carpathian tree species, i.e., the Ellenberg (EQ), Forestry Aridity (FAI), Mayr Tetratherm (MT) and De Martonne Aridity (AI) indices. Statistically significant but weak trends were obtained for the 6-month SPI for four stations (indicating an increase in seasonal to mid-term precipitation), for the 1-month SPEI for three stations, for the 3-month SPEI for four stations, and for MT for all stations (indicating an increase in drought intensity). The analysis of dry month frequency according to particular indices shows that at most of the stations during the last decade of the study period, the frequency of dry months was much higher than in previous decades, especially in the cold half-year. Two zones of the Polish Carpathians are the most prone to drought occurrence: the peak zone due to the shift in climatic vertical zones triggered by the air temperature increase, and the forelands and foothills, together with basins located about 200–400 m a.s.l., where the mean annual air temperature is the highest in all the vertical profile, the annual sums of precipitation are very diversified, and the conditions for beech are already unfavorable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diurnal cycle of both air temperature and wind speed is characterized by considerable differences, when comparing open site conditions to forests. In the course of this article, a new two-hourly, open-source dataset, covering a high spatial and temporal variability, is presented and analyzed. It contains air temperature measurements (128 station pairs (open/forest); six winter seasons; six study sites), wind speed measurements (64 station pairs; three winter seasons, four study sites) and related metadata in central Europe. Daily cycles of air temperature and wind speed, as well as further dependencies of the effective Leaf Area Index (effective LAI), the exposure in the context of forest effects, and the distance to the forest edge, are illustrated in this paper. The forest effects on air temperature can be seen particularly with increasing canopy density, in southern exposures, and in the late winter season, while wind speed depends on multiple factors such as effective LAI or the distance to the forest edge. New transfer functions, developed using linear and non-linear regression analysis, in a leave-one-out cross-validation, improve certain efficiency criteria (NSME; r2; RMSE; MAE) compared to existing transfer functions. The dataset enables multiple purposes and capabilities due to its diversity and sample size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper an attempt is made to reconstruct air temperature variations in winter (December, January and February) from 2500 documentary data over the period ad 750–1300 for a region comprising the Benelux countries, eastern France, western Germany, Switzerland and northern Italy. Anomalous (warm and cold) winters were classified on the basis of proxy information on frost, freezing of water bodies, duration of snowcover and untimely activity of vegetation using semiquantitative indices. For the most severe winters during the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ (MWP) as well as for the outstanding warm and dry winter ad 1289/90, possible analogue cases from the last 300 years are considered, analysed, synoptically interpreted and compared with each other. It is concluded that severe winters were somewhat less frequent and less extreme during the MWP, ad 900–1300, than in the ninth century and from 1300 to 1900. Mean air temperatures for 30 year. periods were estimated from linear regression models including indices and instrumental measurements. From ad 1090 to 1179 winter temperatures were at the level of the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA). From ad 1180 to 1299 they were at that of the twentieth century. The warm and stable winter climate in the thirteenth century supported subtropical plants such as olive trees in the Po valley (northern Italy) and fig trees around Cologne (Germany). The period ad 1300– 1329 which marks the transition to the LIA was 1°C colder. It is concluded that the 1961–90 level of winter temperatures in western central Europe is still within the threshold of natural variability of the last thousand years, albeit at its upper boundary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temperature is widely known as one of the most important drivers to forecast electricity and gas variables, such as the load. Because of that reason, temperature forecasting is and has been for years of great interest for energy forecasters and several approaches and methods have been published. However, these methods usually do not consider temperature trend, which causes important error increases when dealing with medium- or long-term estimations. This paper presents several temperature forecasting methods based on time series decomposition and analyzes their results and the trends of 37 different European countries, proving their annual average temperature increase and their different behaviors regarding trend and seasonal components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The combined SVM/TBATS model improves pure TBATS or SVM air temperature prediction. • Dynamics of the weather conditions influences SVM/TBATS long-term prediction. • The lengths of the learning/testing data sets should be individually estimated. • The SVM/TBATS model can be successfully used for filling gaps in time series data. • SVM/TBATS predicted and measured temperature values lead to similar modelled yield. This paper explores the idea of combining Trigonometric Exponential Smoothing State Space model with Box-Cox transformation, ARMA errors, Trend and Seasonal Components (TBATS) with Support Vector Machine (SVM) model to estimate time series of the minimum and maximum daily air temperatures in a period of six years for various climatic localizations in Europe. It was found that a combined SVM/TBATS model can predict not only seasonality but also local temperature variation between subsequent days observed in daily data. Because the SVM sub-model uses not only results of TBATS prediction as an input data, but also several meteorological values, such modelling cannot be treated as a future time series estimation. Therefore, it has a potential to be used for filling gaps in the air temperature data. As is shown in our results, the precision of air temperature prediction improves when using the combined SVM/TBATS modelling, compared with pure TBATS or SVM modelling. For various locations, which can be related with different climatic conditions, this improvement ranged from 3% up to 14% for the maximum daily air temperature and from 5% to 25% for the minimum daily air temperature. The temperature sums calculated on the base of air temperatures predicted with SVM/TBATS models and from measured values did not differ more than 300°C (less than 1°C per day) in majority of cases. The average error in wheat yield prediction by WOFOST and DNDC models did not exceed 12.8% and 13.3%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We developed a stage-structured population dynamics model for Aedes albopictus. • The model includes temperature-dependent biodemographic functions. • We predict Ae. albopictus potential distribution, abundance and activity in the EU. The Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) is one of the most invasive disease vectors worldwide. The species is a competent vector of dengue, chikungunya, Zika viruses and other severe parasites and pathogens threatening human health. The capacity of this mosquito to colonize and establish in new areas (including temperate regions) is enhanced by its ability of producing diapausing eggs that survive relatively cold winters. The main drivers of population dynamics for this mosquito are water and air temperature and photoperiod. In this paper, we present a mechanistic model that predicts the potential distribution, abundance and activity of Asian tiger mosquito in Europe. The model includes a comprehensive description of: i) the individual life-history strategies, including diapause, ii) the influence of weather-driven individual physiological responses on population dynamics and iii) the density-dependent regulation of larval mortality rate. The model is calibrated using field data from several locations along an altitudinal gradient in the Italian Alps, which enabled accurate prediction of cold temperature effects on population abundance, including identification of conditions that prevent overwintering of the species. Model predictions are consistent with the most updated information on species' presence and absence. Predicted population abundance shows a clear south-north decreasing gradient. A similar yet less evident pattern in the activity of the species is also predicted. The model represents a valuable tool for the development of strategies aimed at the management of Ae. albopictus and for the implementation of effective control measures against vector-borne diseases in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]