Precipitation conditions in Hungary from 1854 to 2022

Abstract

In Hungary, the regular precipitation measurements began in the 1850s under the direction of the then Austrian Meteorological Institute based in Vienna, and from 1870 onwards continued under the Budapest-based "Meteorológiai és Földdelejességi Magyar Királyi Központi Intézet", now HungaroMet Hungarian Meteorological Service. Over the decades, the measurements have undergone many changes, including changes in instrumentation and relocation of stations, which cause inhomogeneities in the data series. In addition, the number of stations and the density of the station network have also changed significantly. As a result, the data series need to be homogenized and interpolated to a uniform grid in order to study the climate and its changes over the long term. In this paper, we present the methods used, discuss the station systems used for precipitation homogenization and interpolation in different periods, analyze the main verification statistics of homogenization and also the results of interpolation, and examine the annual, seasonal, and monthly precipitation data series and their extremes for the period 1854–2022.