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

• Provide relevant input to EU water policy makers on the impacts to the water
sector (agriculture, urban centres, industrial and energy sectors, civil
protection, spatial planning) under climate change scenarios.
• Perform economic analyses of the costs of adapting to climate change in the
water sector and analysis of the externalities of environmental systems under
climate change impacts.
• Most importantly, to develop and apply regional climate change models at the
sub-regional and river basin scale to Asses potential response of land and
water systems, and mitigation strategies with associated costs.
Specifically in the water sector, to
• Quantify at the European and river basin scale the impacts of climate change
on water quality of surface water and GW, and water classification for river
basin management by coupling river basin – coastal zone models in a climate
changed world.
• Quantify at the European and river basin scale the impacts of climate change
on water quantity, its spatial-temporal distribution including extreme events
such as floods and droughts, and availability of surface and GW under
different scenarios and uses, and the associated costs of adaptation.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of different protection measures in trans-national
river basins with hydrological models as a response to possible increase in
extreme events.
• Evaluate the impacts of climate change on the re-mobilization, redistribution
and emission of contaminants (chemical and microbiological) as a result of
warming and extreme events.
• Establish long term monitoring at the pan-European scale of marine and
coastal systems using earth observing satellites and other tools of those
parameters sensitive or indicative of climate change (SST, sea level rise,
biomass, primary productivity, carbon cycles, wind fields, trophic state).
We hope the Report contributes to the European discussions on climate change, its
impacts and policy implications. The policy makers of Europe and worldwide have
their hands full in coming years and decades, as the climate warms, as water
resources become too spatially intensive or scarce, as ecological systems undergo
serious and perhaps irreversible changes. Our policy makers will need considered
input from all elements of society to address the important issues facing sustainable
water use.
As a final word, I wish to acknowledge all the co-authors of this Report for their
willingness to contribute their time, knowledge and experience to an ‘extra’ activity of
importance. Without the many co-authors, the preparationof this Report would not
have been possible.
8
The Editor