Global Climate Observing System

Awareness of the issue of urban heat stress has grown in recent years, not only in the city and canton of Bern but also in other municipalities and towns across Switzerland. This has led to a corresponding increase in interest in urban climate measurements and data. Until now, each municipality has acted independently in planning and implementation, with no common standards in place.

In our three-year MeteoSwiss GCOS project “Upscaling Low-cost Urban Climate networks with Stakeholder Needs, ULUC”, we are working on the standardisation of urban climate measurements and data in collaboration with interested municipalities and cities. All stakeholders involved (city administration, private companies, the public) are to be included in this process. From the establishment of the measurement network, through data processing, to the application of the data, standards are being set which can be adopted by other Swiss towns and municipalities in the future.

The urban climate data from nine partner networks is now available on the URS open data platform on BORIS. This dataset is also intended to encourage other research institutes to carry out multi-city analyses in the field of urban climate.