Adapting Energy Infrastructure to Climate Change – Is There a Need for Government Interventions and Legal Obligations within the German “Energiewende”?

AbstractThe energy sector is considered a critical infrastructure. Important questions to be answered are, how climate change will affect the security of energy provision in the future. Based on an analysis of the available relevant literature the major vulnerabilities of the German energy sector are identified. Focusing on power generation and grid infrastructure we analyze whether adaptation measures, if necessary, are taken voluntarily or if governmental interventions are needed and justifiable. We show that governmental interventions are justifiable regarding measures to adapt the grid infrastructure

Why climate change adaptation in cities needs customised and flexible climate services

AbstractCities are key players in climate change adaptation and mitigation due to a spatial concentration of assets, people and economic activities. They are thus contributing to and especially vulnerable to climate change. Identifying, planning, implementing and monitoring respective measures in cities is challenging and resource consuming. The paper outlines challenges for adaptation, discusses most common approaches and argues why implementation of theoretical methods has its shortcomings. Based on case studies, an innovative, practice-oriented approach has been tested to develop a climate service prototype product. It provides a general framework that allows a flexible and customised support for cities to adapt to expected impacts of a changing climate

Stillstand als Chance

In an Leistung orientierten Gesellschaften bedeutet Stillstand einen Rückschritt. Dies gilt auf den ersten Blick auch für die Klimadebatte, die in Politik, Gesellschaft, Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft engagiert und mit großer Persistenz aber nur geringen Fortschritten betrieben wird. Dabei kann eben dieser Stillstand auch als Chance gesehen werden

Innovatives Stadtklimamodell PALM-4U zur Unterstützung der kommunalen Anpassungsstrategien

Klimaschutz und KlimaanpassungWeltweit reagieren Städte sehr sensibel auf Veränderungen des Klimas. Sie weisen eine hohe Vulnerabilität aufgrund ihrer exponierten Lage, hohen Bevölkerungskonzentration, Infrastruktur und Wertschöpfung auf. In Deutschland blicken viele Städte und Stadtquartiere auf eine lange Geschichte und ausgeprägte Urbanisierung zurück. Da die Städte sich relativ langsam entwickeln, müssen bereits heute Maßnahmen ergriffen werden, um sich an die zu erwartenden Folgen der Klimaänderung anpassen zu können. Wichtige Grundlage für zukünftige stadtplanerische Entscheidungen kann das im vom BMBF geförderten Forschungsvorhaben [UC]² (Urban Climate Under Change) verwendete innovative, leistungsstarke Klimamodell PALM (Parallelized Large-eddy simulation Model) bilden, welches das Potenzial hat, die tägliche Planungsarbeit im urbanen Umfeld zu unterstützen, um so individuelle stadtklimatologische Aspekte angemessen zu berücksichtigen. In unserer Präsentation werden wir das Projekt ProPolis und das mikroskalige Stadtklimamodell PALM-4U (PALM for urban applications) vorstellen. In ProPolis ist es unter anderem geplant, die Städte und Kommunen mit der Implementierung einer anwenderfreundlichen graphischen Nutzeroberfläche für das Modell und mit Schulungen in die Lage zu versetzen, eigenständige Simulationen für ihre künftigen Anpassungsmaßnahmen durchzuführen Ganze Großstädte (zw. 1000 – 2000 km²) bis hin zur Gebäudeauflösung von wenigen Metern können mit dem Modell PALM-4U unter verschiedenen individuellen stadtklimatischen und bioklimatischen Gesichtspunkten (thermisches Wohlbefinden (PT, PET, UTCI), Kaltlufthaushalt (Produktionsquellen und -reichweite), lokaler Windkomfort (mittlerer Wind und Böen) und Schadstoffausbreitung (inkl. Chemie-Prozesse)) simuliert und geprüft werden. Wir planen den Anwendungsfall einer deutschen Großstadt vorzustellen, bei dem die Wirkung von Klimaanpassungsmaßnahmen zwischen dem Ist- und Planzustand gezeigt wird. Die in PALM-4U simulierten Auswirkungen einer extensiven oder einer intensiven grünen Infrastruktur sollen eine Argumentationsgrundlage für mehr Grün in einer verdichteten Stadt bilden

Urban Climate Under Change [UC]2 – A National Research Programme for Developing a Building-Resolving Atmospheric Model for Entire City Regions

Large cities and urban regions are confronted with rising pressure by environmental pollution, impacts of climate change, as well as natural and health hazards. They are characterised by heterogeneous mosaics of urban structures, causing modifications of atmospheric processes on different temporal and spatial scales. Planning authorities need reliable, locally relevant information on urban atmospheric processes, providing fine spatial resolutions in city quarters or street canyons, as well as projections of future climates, specifically downscaled to individual cities. Therefore, building-resolving urban climate models for entire city regions are required as tool for urban development and planning, air quality control, as well as for design of actions for climate change mitigation and adaptation. To date, building-resolving atmospheric models covering entire large cities are mostly missing. The German research programme “Urban Climate Under Change” ([UC]2) aims at developing a new urban climate model, to acquire three-dimensional observational data for model testing and validation, and to test its practicability and usability in collaboration with relevant stakeholders to provide a scientifically sound and practicable instrument to address the above mentioned challenges. This article provides an outline of the collaborative activities of the [UC]2 research programme

Ten principles to integrate the water-energy-land nexus with climate services for co-producing local and regional integrated assessments

The water-energy-land nexus requires long-sighted approaches that help avoid maladaptive pathways to ensure its promise to deliver insights and tools that improve policy-making. Climate services can form the foundation to avoid myopia in nexus studies by providing information about how climate change will alter the balance of nexus resources and the nature of their interactions. Nexus studies can help climate services by providing information about the implications of climate-informed decisions for other economic sectors across nexus resources. First-of-its-kind guidance is provided to combine nexus studies and climate services. The guidance consists of ten principles and a visual guide, which are discussed together with questions to compare diverse case studies and with examples to support the application of the principles

Reframing climate services to support municipal and regional planning

[EN] Climate services were initially established with the aim to make the vast amount of climate data, projections and other climate science output publicly available to support the development of responses to society's vulnerability to climate change. In Europe embraced the concept was not only embraced to provide access to scientific knowledge and reduce vulnerability, but also as an opportunity to promote innovation, business opportunities and employment, highlighting the importance of involving users in developing climate services. However, not only differences in knowledge and skills, but also in framing of climate risks and information needs, pose a serious gap between suppliers and users of climate information, sometimes called the "valley of death". Focusing on urban and rural development at the regional and local level as key areas of application for climate services, the paper characterizes this valley of death and suggests options to bridge the gap. We suggest that reframing of the concept of climate services can help expand their applications and effectiveness, taking local non-climate challenges, opportunities and narratives into account. We provide examples from the European ERA4CS project INNOVA. The current focus of climate service development is very much on digital forms of climate change information. While this may provide a useful "back office" function, active brokerage and mediated transfer of knowledge between public and private actors, face-to-face collaboration between providers and clients ("front office"), and integration of social, economic and non-climate environmental challenges with climate risks can help bridging the "valley of death".We acknowledge the European Research Area for Climate Services (ERA4CS) project INNOVA (Grant Agreement number 690462) for the financial support to this research. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for detailed comments on a previous draft and many excellent suggestionsSwart, R.; Celliers, L.; María Máñez-Costa; Collard, M.; Garcia-Prats, A.; Huang-Lachmann, J.; Llario Sempere, F.... (2021). Reframing climate services to support municipal and regional planning. Climate Services. 22:1-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cliser.2021.100227S1122

Linking Pan-European data to the local scale for decision making for global change and water scarcity within water resources planning and management

[EN] This study focuses on a novel type of methodology which connects Pan-European data to the local scale in the field of water resources management. This methodology is proposed to improve and facilitate the decision making within the planning and management of water resources, taking into account climate change and its expected impacts. Our main point of interest is focused on the assessment of the predictability of extreme events and their possible effects, specifically droughts and water scarcity. Consequently, the Júcar River Basin was selected as the case study, due to the ongoing water scarcity problems and the last drought episodes suffered in the Mediterranean region. In order to study these possible impacts, we developed a modeling chain divided into four steps, they are: i) data collection, ii) analysis of available data, iii) models calibration and iv) climate impact analysis. Over previous steps, we used climate data from 15 different regional climate models (RCMs) belonging to the three different Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) coming from a hydrological model across all of Europe called E-HYPE. The data were bias corrected and used to obtain statistical results of the availability of water resources for the future (horizon 2039) and in form of indicators. This was performed through a hydrological (EVALHID), stochastic (MASHWIN) and risk management (SIMRISK) models, all of which were specifically calibrated for this basin. The results show that the availability of water resources is much more enthusiastic than in the current situation, indicating the possibility that climate change, which was predicted to occur in the future has already happened in the Júcar River Basin. It seems that the so called Effect 80 , an important decrease in water resources for the last three decades, is not well contemplated in the initial data.The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, suggestions and positive feedback. All remaining errors, however, are solely the responsibility of the authors. We would also like to express our gratitude to the Jucar River Basin Authority - Confederacion Hidrografica del Jucar (Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fishery, Food and Environment) for providing data to develop this study. The authors wish to thank the Spanish Ministry of Economyand Competitiveness for its financial support through the NUTEGES project (CGL2012-34978) and ERAS project (CTM2016-77804-P). We also value the support provided by the European Community's Seventh Framework Program in financing the projects ENHANCE (FP7-ENV-2012, 308438), AGUAMOD (Interreg V-B Sudoe 2016), SWICCA (ECMRWF-Copernicus-FA 2015/C3S_441-LOT1/SMHI) and IMPREX (H2020-WATER-2014-2015, 641811).Suárez-Almiñana, S.; Pedro Monzonís, M.; Paredes Arquiola, J.; Andreu Álvarez, J.; Solera Solera, A. (2017). Linking Pan-European data to the local scale for decision making for global change and water scarcity within water resources planning and management. The Science of The Total Environment. 603-604:126-139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.05.259S126139603-60