1 Will climate change increase the risk for critical infrastructure failures in Europe due to extreme precipitation? EGU Vienna April 2016 Katrin Nissen and Uwe Ulbrich Institute of Meteorology Freie Universität Berlin www.rain-project.eu This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 608166. The contents of this presentation are the author's views. The European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

Heavy Precipitation The RAIN Project Risk Analysis of Infrastructure Networks in response to extreme weather Heavy Precipitation

Which thresholds are relevant? Regulations for drainage systems Stakeholder inteviews 10-year return values amount intensity

Example for impacts High Amounts High Intensities Large-scale summer flood Central Europe May/June 2013 Small-scale convective event Berlin August 2013

Data EURO-CORDEX 0.11° (~12 km) daily: 10 simulations 3-hourly: 6 simulations DRIVING GCM RCA4 RACMO22E CCLM4-8-17 HIRHAM5 MPI-ESM day, 3 hour   day EC-EARTH HADGEM2 CM5A-MR CM5 Scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5

Thresholds 10-year return value (1971-2000) High Amounts High Intensities mm/day mm/3hours Multi-model ensemble mean

Identification of events Identification of areas in which the 10-year return value is exceeded Tracking in time and space Information on: Duration Size Severity (duration,size and amount) Aug 9 Aug 10 Aug 11 Aug 12 Aug 13 Example: August 2002 5 days 185000 km2 [mm]

Climate change signal 8 High Amounts High Intensities (accumulation 1-3 days) (3-hourly) 2021-2050 2071-2100 2021-2050 2071-2100 RCP8.5 Difference in number of events between 1971-2000 and RCP8.5 scenario

Climate change signal High Amounts High Intensities Central Europe Iberian Peninsula Present day RCP8.5 2071-2100 seasonal cycle size seasonal cycle size

Conclusions YES: The multi-model ensemble forced with RCP8.5 greenhouse gas emissions predicts an increase in the number of heavy precipitation events posing a risk on infrastructure Strongest increase in North-Western Europe Up to 4-fold increase in number of high intensity events Numbers double for events with high amounts in some regions