Mass Movement Processes Under Changing Climatic and Socioeconomic Conditions - Sustainable Development in Mountain Regions: Southeastern Europe - page 22

Fig. 3.2 In and around the Communities of Gasen and Haslau about 400 predominantly shallow
landslides often with ongoing debris flow were documented (red points) occurring during and
shortly after the precipitation event of August 20 and 21, 2005 (Hagen and Andrecs, 2009 )
3.3 Climate Change - Facts and Assumptions
Looking back to earth temperature history, we can take it as a fact that climate is
not constant. Knowledge about other climate parameters like precipitation is frag-
mentary. There have always been climate changes driven by, e.g. continental drift,
earth orbit parameters and even greenhouse gas concentrations; built up by feedback
effects of the glacial stage which influences earth albedo. The main task is to find
out the intensity of change and its impact on society, which must not be necessarily
negative. Climate history can probably help us to understand and predict ongoing
and further climatic development.
The Fourth Assessment Report of IPCC ( 2007 ) found out that global warming is
already a fact and will continue (virtually certain) in the 21st century, depending on
the development of greenhouse gas emissions. According to the IPCC report, it is
very likely that heavy precipitation events have already increased over most areas,
and this trend is likely to continue. For Central Europe (Christensen et al., 2007 ),
summer precipitation will decrease with drought but extreme precipitation events
are likely to increase (prediction highly model-dependent). Winter precipitation will
increase as well as extreme precipitation events (in magnitude and frequency) while
snow cover will decrease.