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Heat waves have large adverse social, economic and environmental effects which include increased mortality, transport restrictions and a decreased agricultural production. The estimated economic losses of the 2007 heat wave in South-east Europe exceed 2 billion EUR with 19 000 hospitalisation in Romania only. Understanding the changes of the hydrological cycle components is essential for early forecasting of heat wave occurrence. Valuable insight of two components of the hydrological cycle, namely Integrated Water Vapour (IWV) and Terrestrial Water Storage Anomaly (TWSA), is now possible using observations from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission. In this study anomalies of temperature, precipitation, IWV and TWS in 2007 are compared to 2003–2013 period for Sofia, Bulgaria. In 2007, positive temperature anomalies are observed in January, February and July. There are negative IWV and precipitation anomalies in July 2007 that coincides with the heat wave in Bulgaria. TWSA in 2007 are negative in January, May and from July to October being largest in August. Long-term trends of: 1) temperatures have a local maximum in March 2007, 2) TWSA has a local minimum in May 2007, 3) IWV has a local minimum in September 2007, and 4) precipitation has a local maximum in July 2007. The TWSA interannual trends in Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland show similar behaviour as indicated by cross correlation coefficients of 0.9 and 0.7 between Bulgaria and Hungary and Bulgaria and Poland respectively. ALADIN-Climate describes the anomalies of temperature and IWV more successfully than those of precipitation and TWS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Maïdo high-altitude observatory located in Reunion Island (21° S, 55.5° E) is equipped with the Lidar1200, an innovative Raman lidar designed to measure the water vapor mixing ratio in the troposphere and the lower stratosphere, to perform long-term survey and processes studies in the vicinity of the tropopause. The calibration methodology is based on a GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) IWV (Integrated Water Vapor) dataset. The lidar water vapor measurements from November 2013 to October 2015 have been calibrated according to this methodology and used to evaluate the performance of the lidar. The 2-year operation shows that the calibration uncertainty using the GNSS technique is in good agreement with the calibration derived using radiosondes. During the MORGANE (Maïdo ObservatoRy Gaz and Aerosols NDACC Experiment) campaign (Reunion Island, May 2015), CFH (Cryogenic Frost point Hygrometer) radiosonde and Raman lidar profiles are compared and show good agreement up to 22 km asl; no significant biases are detected and mean differences are smaller than 9% up to 22 km asl. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]