Will there be more extreme heat days? Will there be less but more torrential precipitation? How will climate change affect EU citizens’ food security? How certain are we about all this?
The edited version of the first EU Climate RIsk Assessment (EUCRA) report has been published today, aiming at answering some questions like those posted above, given they’re beginning to be just too present at many different levels such as our health or economy. It comes with a couple of data visualisation apps we’ve contributed to develop.
Here’s an excerpt of the report (you can read the full version here):
Europe is the fastest-warming continent in the world. Extreme heat, once relatively rare, is becoming more frequent while precipitation patterns are changing. Downpours and other precipitation extremes are increasing in severity, and recent years have seen catastrophic floods in various regions. At the same time, southern Europe can expect considerable declines in overall rainfall and more severe droughts.
The report’s goal (and that of the apps too) is to inform about current and future climate risks, as a part of the EU Adaptation Strategy, meant for anticipating these challenges.
An interactive way of visualising the information
In order to facilitate the analysis of the information included in the report, the development of interactive tools was decided. These tools, developed by our team, are available here and here, and they showcase two different information kits.
On the one hand they showcase the impact drivers in an easy, accessible way (Fig. 1) — information such as yearly total precipitation or average temperature, offering the possibility of applying different filters by EU region, emission scenario or term. Besides, it includes the so-called “non-climate challenges”, such as population change or GDP per capita. This info can be shown in maps or in a table similar to those presented on the report.
On the other hand, a table and a flux diagram (Fig. 2), showcase the main climate risks in a variety of sectors, the urgency to act to halt a given impact or who is in charge of developing a particular policy for a wide array of climate challenges (such as the impact on coastal areas, on food production or on the electric grid, causing discontinuity due to drought, among many others).
It also details the percentage of confidence based on the agreement among the information sources we drew the data from (detailed further below).
The data used has been compiled from the European Climate Data Explorer, the Copernicus Climate Change Service and the IPCC Interactive Atlas, as well as the DRMKC Risk Data Hub, research projects such as PESETA IV and the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.
Funding for this first EUCRA report came from the European Commission and the contribution of entities such as the European Environmental Agency, the Copernicus Climate Change Service and the Joint Research Centre. The ETC-CA consortium was awarded the contract for implementing the report and the visualisation tools.
Should you need more information, don’t hesitate to reach out to us via email on predictia@predictia.es.