Climate change impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2016

Changes in the climate system
Projections: European temperature
Temperatures across Europe are projected to continue
increasing throughout this century. Projections from
the EURO-CORDEX initiative suggest that European
land areas will warm faster on average than global land
areas (Jacob et al., 2014). According to the multi-model
ensemble mean, European land areas are projected to
warm in the range of 1 to 4.5 °C for the RCP4.5 scenario
and in the range of 2.5 to 5.5 °C for RCP8.5 over the
21st century (2071–2100 compared with 1971–2000)
(Map 3.4). The strongest warming is projected over
north-eastern Europe and Scandinavia in winter and
over southern Europe in summer.
Map 3.4
Projected changes in mean annual, summer and winter temperature for the forcing
scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5
Annual, RCP4.5
Summer, RCP4.5
Winter, RCP4.5
Annual, RCP8.5
Summer, RCP8.5
Winter, RCP8.5
Projected change in annual, summer and winter temperature for the forcing scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5
Note:
ºC
1.5 to 2
2 to 2.5
2.5 to 3
3 to 3.5
3.5 to 4
4 to 4.5
4.5 to 5
5 to 5.5
5.5 to 6
> 6
Outside
coverage
0 500 1 000 1 500 km
This map shows projected changes in mean annual (left), summer (middle) and winter (right) near-surface air temperature (°C) in
the period 2071–2100 compared with the baseline period 1971–2000 for the forcing scenarios RCP4.5 (top) and RCP8.5 (bottom).
Model simulations are based on the multi-model ensemble average of many different combined GCM–RCM simulations from the
EURO‐CORDEX initiative.
Source: EURO-CORDEX (Jacob et al., 2014).
76 Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2016 | An indicator-based report