Climate Change and the European Water Dimension - Agri ...

At the 2003 Rome Informal Meeting of the Water Directors, they requested that the
JRC coordinate the preparation of a scientific document on climate change
emphasizing Europe and the dimension of the water resource implications of a
climate changed world. The JRC accepted the challenge and sought the
collaboration of more than 40 scientists from Europe and within the JRC to draft a
scientific synthesis of what we know or think we know about climate change and its
impacts on water resources at the European scale. This report, which increases the
knowledge base on climate change, would then be used,, along with other recently
issued reports by the EEA (2004) and the Arctic Council (2004) to address the
question whether existing EU water policy and anticipated evolution of water policy
could accommodate the protection of European water resources in a climatechanged
world. The draft outline of the report now titled Climate Change and the
European Water Dimension was approved at the Water Directors Meeting in Rome.
The Report is a scientific synthsis, not a concensus document, of many but not all
dimensions of the climate change phenomena in the water sector.
The Report is organized into six chapters progressing from the global to European
perspectives of climate change, initially based on the IPCC 2001 report but updated
with new published information, potential aquatic impacts in different aquatic sectors
and case studies. Specifically, Chapters I and II present the global and European
perspective on climate change predictions, scenarios and impacts. Chapter III
summarizes the hydrological cycle and the compartments and flows most sensitive to
climate change impacts. Chapter IV provides a summary of the global and regional
indicators of climate variability such as the North Atlantic Oscillation, and then
proceeds to provide analyses of real and potential climate change impacts on lakes,
coastal and marine systems, and Mediterranean lagoons (as an example of an
especially sensitive aquatic ecosystem). Chapter V is a series of sub-chapters
addressing some of the major challenges in climate change scenarios such as
floods, droughts, changing ecological status and the WFD, and water in agriculture.
Chapter VI provides a series of case studies highlighting the reality of climate change
and variability as witnessed for four lakes in Europe, the Venice lagoon, and the Ebro
and Po River Basins. Further chapters address the issues of water-borne and
vector-borne disease likely exacerbated by climate change. The last part of Chapter
VI introduce the potential implications of climate change as a perturber of the global
Hg cycle and to mobilization of persistent organic chemicals such as dioxins and
PCBs as a result of floods and general temperature increases.
The Key Points of this Report are presented at the beginning of each Chapter to
provide additional clarity in grasping the information and knowledge. The chapters
document rising temperatures, sea level rise, intensification of the hydrologic cycle,
the competing needs of different water sectors exacerbated by climate-induced
change, the warming of large lakes and the global ocean including the Mediterranean
Sea, ecosystems at risk and the potential for indirect effects hardly imagined today.
It is beyond the scope of this report to make specific recommendations to the policy
makers how they might address the climate-induced changes in the water sector.
However surrounding the release of the report and discussions at the Amsterdam
Water Directors Meeting in December 2004 and over numerous coffees, some
suggestions for discussion were raised.
In the area of adaptation, there is a need to:
• Identify and detect signals of climate change in inland and coastal waters.
• Develop indicators sensitive to climate variability and climate change of the
impacts on inland and coastal waters.
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