Climate change impacts and water in Western Balkan Blaz Kurnik EEA + colleagues from ETC

Outline Introduction Climate impacts and water extremes (from past to future) Assessing tools for climate prediction and impact modelling (simplicity vs. complexity) Preliminary results Conclusions

Report about climate impacts and vulnerability in Europe

Water related natural hazards (e.g. droughts and water scarcity)

Water related natural hazards (e.g. floods)

Simple indices vs. water balance model The SPI is an index based on the probability of recording a given amount of precipitation, and the probabilities are standardized so that an index of zero indicates the median precipitation amount McKee et al Easy to compute (historical and operational precipitation data) Drought is calculated using only precipitations A physically based distributed rainfall-runoff model programmed in a dynamic GIS- language Calculation of the soil moisture – important drought indicator Complex model which needs a lot of validation and calibration for different regions

Impact models (components of water cycle modelling) Inter- linkages and feedback effects

Trends in European precipitation Variability of rainfalls in last 100 yearsPrecipitation trends

Trends in droughts Europe South Eastern Europe droughts

Climate projections and impact models Climate model Impact models

Trends in droughts Europe SE Europe

Average drought conditions in the future climate Europe SE Europe 95 th 75 th 50 th – mean 25 th 5 th

Scenarios: Scenario 1: The good society in Balkan (low climate change impacts in the region, sustainable economic development), state in 2060 Scenario 2: yes, we can! Technogarden in Balkans (high climate change impacts in the region, sustainable economic development )- state in 2060 Scenario 3: Run to the hills (low climate change impacts in the region, un-sustainable economic development )- state in 2060 Scenario 4: downward spiral (high climate change impacts in the region, un-sustainable economic development ) - state in 2060

Changes in water extremes - droughts

Changes in surface run-off

Intermediate conclusions and way forward Regional Climate Models (RCMs) are important tool to assess future climates at the regional level; socio - economic scenarios are very important factor in predicting climate associated risks; strong agreement among scenarios and RCMs for drought occurrence in southern Europe; weaker agreement among scenarios and models concerning surface run-off;

Intermediate conclusions and way forward Presented results are based on on-going work and need to be carefully studied; clear definition of the criteria on which land cover scenario are based; need for using larger ensemble of the regional climate models (based on the local knowledge) – regional cooperation;