Clim4Cast: Central Europe gains a new tool to forecast climate extremes

Drought, heatwaves, and wildfires are becoming an increasingly significant challenge for countries in Central Europe. The Clim4Cast project, therefore, focused on developing a forecasting tool for early warning of these extreme events, preparing action plans to improve preparedness, and assessing the impacts of climate change across the region. Throughout the project, there was close and systematic international cooperation not only among partners, but also with end users in practice — from public administration to crisis management. “Thanks to the Clim4Cast project, Central Europe is better prepared to face risks that are occurring ever more frequently due to climate change. Data sharing, joint procedures and modern forecasting tools are key to effective decision‑making,” the conference organisers state. 

The conference will introduce a new Clim4Cast web portal (https://clim4cast.eu/cs/), which monitors the current occurrence of drought, heatwaves and wildfires and provides a daily updated 9‑day forecast. Project leader Lenka Bartošová (CzechGlobe) emphasises that “the website is available in seven language versions and represents the first unified platform of its kind in Central Europe. It includes map overviews of risks, links to local monitoring systems operated by partner organisations, and detailed video tutorials.” 

Another key output is an extensive database of impacts of droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires covering the 2000–2025 period. The database contains more than 660 extreme events and almost 5,000 records of their impacts on society and nature. The dataset enables scientists to assess the cross‑border effects of individual events and their severity, and to identify so‑called compound events. The database will be made freely available to the professional community in 2026. 

Media contacts: 
Ing. Lenka Bartošová, PhD 
M: +420 603 160 073 
E: bartosova.l@czechglobe.cz 

MSc Lukáš Dolák, PhD 
M: +420 724 782 872 
E: dolak@sci.muni.cz 

Notes for editors 

1. The project is co‑funded by the European Union’s Interreg Central Europe programme for transnational cooperation and aims to deliver a Europe more resilient to current risks. In addition to CzechGlobe, the project involves partners from Masaryk University, the Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute, the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (Germany), TU Wien (Austria), the Institute of Soil Science and Plant Cultivation – State Research Institute (Poland), the Croatian Meteorological and Hydrological Service, and the Slovenian Environment Agency. Additional partners from all countries also participate, including fire and rescue services and representatives of state forests. 
   
   Information about the project’s new outputs is published on the project website: https://www.interreg-central.eu/projects/clim4cast/ and on the new website: https://clim4cast.eu/cs/. 
   
   
2. The Global Change Research Institute CAS – CzechGlobe is a public research institution engaged in research on global change, its manifestations in the atmosphere, and impacts on the biosphere and human society. Successful projects in climate change and impacts include Interdrought, which monitors current agricultural drought and forecasts its development for Central Europe. The same team also operates FireRisk (forecasting fire risk for the Czech Republic), AgroRisk (forecasting biotic and abiotic risks for cultivating various agricultural crops in the Czech Republic), and Vynosyplodin.cz (forecasting crop yields for the Czech Republic). The team also cooperates with the Windy.com platform, where a layer showing and forecasting drought at a global scale is available.