Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP
Are we talking about variable cloud cover or persistent rain after all? Is our climate slowly warming up or is it in fact simply a case of weather cycles that recur repeatedly over several decades? Very few topics engage us as much as the weather, and in so many different ways, whether as a routine topic of small talk, in the planning of outdoor activities or indeed as a sound point of departure from which to discuss the climate change we see today. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP already have 60 years of relevant experience in dealing with the topic of weather and tracking its development. If at the outset this once involved obtaining climate data through local measurements in the field, high-tech measuring equipment and data collected by computers today combine to yield detailed records of weather conditions. Weather forecasts are based on these records, of course, but they also serve as the basis of many research projects at Fraunhofer IBP’s Holzkirchen site.
Searching for a site to take weather readings in the course of the 1950s, there was good reason to settle on Holzkirchen in Oberbayern. Close to the Alps, the rural area lies south of Munich at 700 m above sea level. “There are clearly defined criteria for collecting climate data. For instance, there must not be any tall buildings around the measurement station and the measurement tower must stand 10m above ground level”, advises Johann Gottschling, technician at Fraunhofer IBP and the person responsible for collecting climate data. What began as an interim solution has developed over the years into a permanent institution. In addition, a separate measurement station for swiss-based weather service Meteomedia has been housed on the site since 1999.
Fraunhofer IBP employees began keeping manual records at the weather tower, as it is called, from the beginning of the 1970s, and this lasted until 1984. Since 1985, climate data has been collected electronically using a variety of data logging equipment. Since January 1, 1987, records have been saved onto the IMEDAS database and are made available online. In October 2010 a new weather station was set up at Fraunhofer IBP, which came into service in February 2011.