Showing papers by "Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz published in 2010"

Are climate models “ready for prime time” in water resources management applications, or is more research needed?

Abstract: Citation Kundzewicz, Z. W. & Stakhiv, E. Z. (2010) Are climate models “ready for prime time” in water resources management applications, or is more research needed? Editorial. Hydrol. Sci. J. 55(7), 1085–1089.

River Floods in the Changing Climate—Observations and Projections

Abstract: River flood damages, worldwide, have increased dynamically in the last few decades, so that it is necessary to interpret this change. River flooding is a complex phenomenon which can be affected by changes coupled to terrestrial, socio-economic and climate systems. The climate track in the observed changes is likely, even if human encroaching into the harm’s way and increase in the damage potential in floodplains can be the dominating factors in many river basins. Increase in intense precipitation has already been observed, with consequences to increasing risk of rain-induced flooding. Projections for the future, based on climate model simulations, indicate increase of flood risks in many areas, globally. Over large areas, a 100-year flood in the control period is projected to become much more frequent in the future time horizon. Despite the fact that the degree of uncertainty in model-based projections is considerable and difficult to quantify, the change in design flood frequency has obvious relevance to flood risk management practice. The number of flood-affected people is projected to increase with the amount of warming. For a 4°C warming the number of flood-affected people is over 2.5 times higher than for a 2°C warming. The present contribution addresses the climate track in an integrated way, tackling issues related to multiple factors, change detection, projections, and adaptation to floods.

Assessing River Flood Risk and Adaptation in Europe - Review of Projections for the Future

Abstract: Flood damages have exhibited a rapid upward trend, both globally and in Europe, faster than population and economic growth. Hence, vigorous attempts of attribution of changes have been made. Flood risk and vulnerability tend to change over many areas, due to a range of climatic and nonclimatic impacts whose relative importance is site-specific. Flooding is a complex phenomenon and there are several generating mechanisms, among others intense and/or long-lasting precipitation, snowmelt, ice jam. Projected climate-driven changes in future flood frequency are complex, depending on the generating mechanism, e.g., increasing flood magnitudes where floods result of heavy rainfall and possibly decreasing magnitudes where floods are generated by spring snowmelt. Climate change is likely to cause an increase of the risk of riverine flooding across much of Europe. Projections of flood hazard in Europe based on climatic and hydrological models, reviewed in this paper, illustrate possible changes of recurrence of a 100-year flood (with probability of exceedance being 1-in-100 years) in Europe. What used to be a 100-year flood in the control period is projected to become either more frequent or less frequent in the future time horizon of concern. For a large part of the continent, large flooding is projected to become more commonplace in future, warmer climate. Due to the large uncertainty of climate projections, it is currently not possible to devise a scientifically-sound procedure for redefining design floods (e.g. 100-year flood) in order to adjust flood defenses. For the time being, we recommend to adjust design floods using a “climate change factor” approach.

Impact and adaptation opportunities for European agriculture in response to climatic change and variability

Abstract: Climate change, involving changes in mean climate and climatic variability, is expected to severely affect agriculture and there is a need to assess its impact in order to define the appropriate adaptation strategies to cope with. In this paper, we projected a scenario of European agriculture in a +2°C (above pre-industrial levels) world in order to assess the potential effect of climatic change and variability and to test the effectiveness of different adaptation options. For this purpose, the outputs of HadCM3 General Circulation Model (GCM) were empirically downscaled for current climate (1975–2005) and a future period (2030–2060), to feed a process-based crop simulation model, in order to quantify the impact of a changing climate on agriculture emphasising the impact due to changes in the frequency of extreme events (heat waves and drought). The same climatic dataset was used to compare the effectiveness of different adaptations to a warmer climate strategies including advanced or delayed sowing time, shorter or longer cycle cultivar and irrigation. The results indicated that both changes in mean climate and climate variability affected crop growth resulting in different crop fitting capacity to cope with climate change. This capacity mainly depended on the crop type and the geographical area across Europe. A +2°C scenario had a higher impact on crops cultivated over the Mediterranean basin than on those cultivated in central and northern Europe as a consequence of drier and hotter conditions. In contrast, crops cultivated in Northern Europe generally exhibited higher than current yields, as a consequence of wetter conditions, and temperatures closer to the optimum growing conditions. Simple, no-cost adaptation options such as advancement of sowing dates or the use of longer cycle varieties may be implemented to tackle the expected yield loss in southern Europe as well as to exploit possible advantages in northern regions.

Assessing risk and adaptation options to fires and windstorms in European forestry.

Abstract: Risks can generally be described as the combination of hazard, exposure and vulnerability. Using this framework, we evaluated the historical and future development of risk of fire and wind damage in European forestry at the national level. Fire risk is expected to increase, mainly as a consequence of an increase in fire hazard, defined as the Fire Weather Index in summer. Exposure, defined as forest area, is expected to increase slightly as a consequence of active afforestation and abandonment of marginal agricultural areas. Adaptation options to fire risk should therefore aim to decrease the vulnerability, where a change in tree species from conifers to broadleaves had most effect. Risk for wind damage in forests is expected to increase mainly as a consequence of increase in exposure (total growing stock) and vulnerability (defined by age class and tree species distribution). Projections of future wind climate indicate an increase in hazard (storminess) mainly over Western Europe. Adaptation options should aim to limit the increase in exposure and vulnerability. Only an increase in harvest level can stop the current build-up of growing stock, while at the same time it will lower vulnerability through the reduction of the share of old and vulnerable stands. Changing species from conifers to broadleaves helps to reduce vulnerability as well. Lowering vulnerability by decreasing the rotation length is only effective in combination with a high demand for wood. Due to data limitations, no forecast of future fire area or damaged timber amount by storms was possible.

River flood risk and adaptation in Europe—assessment of the present status

Abstract: Flood disasters have had a devastating effect worldwide over the past century, both in terms of human suffering and material losses. The study of these events and development of more effective adaptation and mitigation policies has become a priority, both in Europe and other parts of the globe. This paper detects and presents the spatial distribution of river flood risks in Europe. The methodology we developed involves an assessment of three key risk components: exposure, vulnerability and hazard. A topography-based flood hazard map of Europe, identifying low-lying areas adjacent to rivers, is presented and used to identify risk, together with land-use data and damage-stage relationship for different land uses. The study covers river flood risk for the entire European continent. This methodology can be used to determine the level of future risk, using the estimations on Hazard, Exposure and Vulnerability from specific climate and economic development models. Annual average flood damage is estimated for European regions, in absolute monetary terms and in % of regional Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The results highlight regions where the threat to the economy from river flood hazard is of major concern.

Climate change and its effect on agriculture, water resources and human health sectors in Poland

Abstract: . Multi-model ensemble climate projections in the ENSEMBLES Project of the EU allowed the authors to quantify selected extreme-weather indices for Poland, of importance to climate impacts on systems and sectors. Among indices were: number of days in a year with high value of the heat index; with high maximum and minimum temperatures; length of vegetation period; and number of consecutive dry days. Agricultural, hydrological, and human health indices were applied to evaluate the changing risk of weather extremes in Poland in three sectors. To achieve this, model-based simulations were compared for two time horizons, a century apart, i.e., 1961–1990 and 2061–2090. Climate changes, and in particular increases in temperature and changes in rainfall, have strong impacts on agriculture via weather extremes – droughts and heat waves. The crop yield depends particularly on water availability in the plant development phase. To estimate the changes in present and future yield of two crops important for Polish agriculture i.e., potatoes and wheat, some simple empirical models were used. For these crops, decrease of yield is projected for most of the country, with national means of yield change being: –2.175 t/ha for potatoes and –0.539 t/ha for wheat. Already now, in most of Poland, evapotranspiration exceeds precipitation during summer, hence the water storage (in surface water bodies, soil and ground) decreases. Summer precipitation deficit is projected to increase considerably in the future. The additional water supplies (above precipitation) needed to use the agro-potential of the environment would increase by half. Analysis of water balance components (now and in the projected future) can corroborate such conclusions. As regards climate and health, a composite index, proposed in this paper, is a product of the number of senior discomfort days and the number of seniors (aged 65+). The value of this index is projected to increase over 8-fold during 100 years. This is an effect of both increase in the number of seniors (over twofold) and the number of senior-discomfort days (nearly fourfold).

Climate change and stream water quality in the multi-factor context

Abstract: Availability of fresh water of adequate quantity and quality is essential to life. Water quality problems turn up as a result of both intensive land use and intensive water use by people. Rivers have been treated worldwide as a convenient recipient of waste that was subsequently transported to the sea. As a result, rivers, lakes and coastal zones became polluted, with harmful consequences for biota and human health, and reduction of the biodiversity of many rivers and water bodies. Besides, due to close linkage of climatic and freshwater systems, water quality is influenced by many climatic factors, such as air and water temperature, precipitation and occurrence of extreme events. Many different water pollutants can be distinguished, such as nutrients, heavy metals, toxic organic pollutants and pathogens. Sources of water pollution are either point or diffuse. The former are represented by easily identifiable, lumped inputs, such as a pipe, where polluted water is discharged to a water body. Much of industrial and municipal wastewaters are discharged to rivers in this way, either with or without treatment. At present, despite improvements in some regions, water pollution is on

Seasonal temperature extremes in Potsdam

Abstract: The awareness of global warming is well established and results from the observations made on thousands of stations This paper complements the large-scale results by examining a long time-series of high-quality temperature data from the Secular Meteorological Station in Potsdam, where observation records over the last 117 years, ie, from January 1893 are available Tendencies of change in seasonal temperature-related climate extremes are demonstrated “Cold” extremes have become less frequent and less severe than in the past, while “warm” extremes have become more frequent and more severe Moreover, the interval of the occurrence of frost has been decreasing, while the interval of the occurrence of hot days has been increasing However, many changes are not statistically significant, since the variability of temperature indices at the Potsdam station has been very strong

Assessing adaptation to extreme weather events in Europe—Editorial

Abstract: The present Special Issue of the journal Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change reviews impacts, risks, and adaptation to extreme weather events in Europe under global and climate change. Most of the multi-disciplinary material of this Special Issue originates from work carried out by an international group of researchers for the ADAM (Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies) Integrated Project of the 6th Framework Programme of the European Union. The escalating increase in disaster losses from floods, droughts, and other climate-related disasters both in developed and developing countries has become a major concern. On a global scale annual material damage from large weather events has increased 8-fold between 1960s and 1990s, while the insured damage has risen even stronger (17-fold in the same interval), yet loss of life has been brought down considerably (Mills 2005). There are several factors that may explain changes in hydro-meteorological hazards and their impacts. The principal three categories of factors read: changes in socio-economic systems (e.g. land-use change, increasing exposure and damage potential, changing risk perception); Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change (2010) 15:611–620 DOI 10.1007/s11027-010-9245-y