Residential wood combustion is a widespread practice in Europe with a serious impact on air quality, especially in mountainous areas. While there is a significant number of studies conducted in deep urbanized valleys and basins, little is known about the air pollution processes in rural shallow hollows, where around 30 % of the people in mountainous areas across Europe live. We aim to determine the influence of ground temperature inversions on wood combustion aerosol pollution in hilly, rural areas. The study uses Retje karst hollow (Loški Potok, Slovenia) as a representative site for mountainous and hilly rural areas in central and south-eastern Europe with residential wood combustion. Sampling with a mobile monitoring platform along the hollow was performed in December 2017 and January 2018. The backpack mobile monitoring platform was used for the determination of equivalent black carbon (eBC) and particulate matter (PM) mass concentrations along the hollow. To ensure high quality of mobile measurement data, intercomparisons of mobile instruments with reference instruments were performed at two air quality stations during every run. Our study showed that aerosol pollution events in the relief depression were associated with high local emission intensities originating almost entirely from residential wood burning and shallow temperature inversions (58 m on average). The eBC and PM mass concentrations showed stronger associations with the potential temperature gradient (R²=0.8) than with any other meteorological parameters taken into account (ambient temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, wind direction, and precipitation). The strong association between the potential temperature gradient and pollutant concentrations suggests that even a small number of emission sources (total 243 households in the studied hollow) in similar hilly and mountainous rural areas with frequent temperature inversions can significantly increase the levels of eBC and PM and deteriorate local air quality. During temperature inversions the measured mean eBC and PM_2.5 mass concentrations in the whole hollow were as high as 4.5±2.6 and 48.0 ± 27.7 µg m⁻³, respectively, which is comparable to larger European urban centres.

V prispevku je predstavljena podnebna tipizacije Slovenije za klimatološko obdobje 1991–2020. Izhodišče za členitev je bila Köppen-Geigerjeva klasifikacija, ki pa je pregroba za prikaz vseh podnebnih specifik Slovenije. Z upoštevanjem dodatnih temperaturnih in padavinskih kriterijev smo slovensko podnebje razčlenili na štiri osnovne tipe z devetimi podtipi: zmerno sredozemsko (obalno in zaledno), zmerno celinsko (severovzhodne, vzhodne in jugovzhodne ter osrednje Slovenije), gorsko (višjega in nižjega gorskega sveta) in podgorsko podnebje (zelo vlažno in vlažno).

Thermal comfort assessments at local or micro-scales within urban areas can provide crucial insights for the urban adaptation strategies pertaining to climate-conscious urban planning and public health. However, the availability of long-term or mid-term daily or hourly meteorological data sets from urban environments remains a significant challenge even in the 21st century. Consequently, this study aimed to assess the thermal conditions in cities across the western part of the Balkan Peninsula, encompassing five countries (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro), by utilizing the Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) index. Meteorological data sets, comprising air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and cloudiness, were collected from 32 national meteorological stations/measurement locations spanning the period from 2001 to 2020. The PET calculations were conducted based on meteorological data measured three times per day (7 a.m., 2 p.m., and 9 p.m.). Upon conducting a spatial analysis of the meteorological stations, it was observed that most of them (25 stations) were situated within built-up areas or urban suburbs, rendering them highly relevant for local or micro-scale climate and bioclimate assessments. The findings revealed that urban locations exhibited slightly higher PET heat stress levels, particularly during the summer season and at 2 p.m. Moreover, higher average PET values were observed in both urban and non-urban stations situated within a continental climate during warmer periods, such as summer. In contrast, during the colder seasons, namely winter and spring, higher PET values were prevalent in the Mediterranean region. Furthermore, the PET frequency analysis revealed a greater prevalence of extreme and severe heat stress levels in stations within continental climates, particularly those located in urban areas, as compared to stations in Mediterranean climates. In contrast, during the winter and spring seasons, monitoring stations in close proximity to the Adriatic Sea, characterized by a Mediterranean climate, exhibited significantly lower levels of cold stress compared to inland stations. Evidently, in addition to the climatic characteristics and surrounding terrain, the urban morphology significantly impacts the thermal conditions within cities.

This article presents the findings from measurements of winter minimum temperatures taken over a period of several years in the high mountain karst depression of Valoviti Do on the Durmitor massif (Montenegro), and compares them with temperatures measured in the network of official stations operated by the Montenegro Hydrometeorological Institute. We took into consideration meteorological stations that are located in the coldest sites of Montenegro. The results of the measurements showed that winter minimum temperatures in high mountain depressions of Montenegro are considerably lower than the temperatures measured in the framework of the national network of meteorological stations, which are rarely located in the mountain environment. In the course of taking measurements in five nonconsecutive winter seasons in the period from 2007 to 2015 we also measured the lowest temperature recorded to date in Montenegro, -40 °C.