Climate Change and Variability: Impact on Central and Eastern Europe

Objective

Observational records show that the global climate is changing and ongoing changes are also visible in Central Eastern Europe. About 64% of all catastrophic events in Europe since 1980 can directly be attributed to weather and climate extremes. Climate change projections show even an increasing likelihood of extremes. Certainly negative impacts of climate change will involve significant economic looses in several regions of Europe, while others may bring health or welfare problems somewhere else. Within CLAVIER three representative Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) will be studied in detail: Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Researches from 6 countries and different disciplines will identify linkages between climate change and its impact on weather patterns with consequences on air pollution, extremes events, and on water resources. Furthermore, an evaluation of the economic impact on agriculture, tourism, energy supply and the public sector will be conducted.

This is of increasing importance for CEEC, which are currently facing a rapid economic development, but also for the European Union as e.g. Romania's and Bulgaria's high vulnerability from extreme events such as floods will impact not only the respective economic goals for joining the EU but also the EU solidarity fund. CLAVIER will focus on ongoing and future climate changes in Central and Eastern European Countries using measurements and existing regional scenarios to determine possible developments of the climate and to address related uncertainty.

In addition, climate projections with very high detail will be carried out for CEEC to fulfil the need for a large amount of detail in time and space, which is inherent in local and regional impact assessment.

Field of science

• /social sciences/other social sciences/social sciences interdisciplinary/sustainable development
• /natural sciences/earth and related environmental sciences/hydrology

Programme(s)

• FP6-SUSTDEV - Sustainable Development, Global Change and Ecosystems: thematic priority 6 under the Focusing and Integrating Community Research programme 2002-2006.

Topic(s)

• SUSTDEV-2005-3.I.3.2 - Climate changes in central-eastern Europe

Call for proposal

FP6-2005-GLOBAL-4
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Coordinator

Participants (12)