We consider the Kato and the Dynkin class and their local counterparts on a smooth Riemannian manifold as Fréchet spaces. Based on recent results by Carron, Mondello and Tewodrose we show that for a Riemannian manifold $(X,g)$ of dimension $m\geq 2$ with spectral negative part $σ^-_g$ of the Ricci curvature in $L^q_{φ_g}(X,g)+L^\infty(X,g)$ for some $q>m/2$, the function $σ^-_g$ is in the Kato class of $(X,g)$ if and only if $(X,g)$ satisfies a Gaussian upper heat kernel bound for small times and is locally volume doubling. Here $L^q_{φ_g}(X,g)$ is the $L^q$-space which is weighted with the inverse volume function. By establishing a localization result for the Dynkin norm, we prove that the local Kato class and the local Dynkin class do not depend on the chosen Riemannian metric and thus can be defined as Fréchet spaces on arbitrary smooth manifolds. Moreover, we prove that smooth compactly supported functions are dense in the local Kato class and we use this result to prove that Schrödinger semigroups with Kato decomposable potentials are space-time continuous.