Holiday Climate Index: Urban—Application for Urban and Rural Areas in Romania

Nature, landscape, relaxation, and outdoor activities are important motivations when choosing rural destinations for vacations. Therefore, when selecting a rural area as a vacation destination, we assume that climate features are important. We investigated the appropriateness of the holiday climate index: urban (HCI:urban) in quantitatively describing the relationship between climate and tourism fluxes in such destinations. We employed data from 94 urban and rural tourist destinations in Romania and correlated the monthly mean HCI:urban values with sectoral data (overnight tourists) for 2010–2018. The results show that weather and climate influenced tourism fluxes similarly in rural and urban destinations, supporting the hypothesis that HCI:urban may be used for rural areas as well. The information derived from HCI:urban may be useful for tourists when planning their vacations as well as for tourism investors in managing their businesses and reducing the weather and climate-related seasonality in tourism fluxes

Variability and Change in Water Cycle at the Catchment Level

This study proposes a simple methodology for assessing future-projected evolution of water cycle components (precipitation, potential evapotranspiration, and potential runoff) based on the two-level Palmer model of the soil and their impact on drought conditions at basin level. The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) is used as drought metric. The catchments of rivers Arges, Mures, Prut, Siret and Somes (mid- and lower Danube basin) have been chosen as case studies. The present climate data consist of Romanian gridded dataset, monthly precipitation and values of streamflow from Romania and Republic of Moldova and potential evapotranspiration-related data from the Climate Research Unit (University of East Anglia). We used as future projections five numerical experiments with regional models obtained through the EURO-CORDEX initiative, under two Representative Concentration Pathway scenarios. The correlations between observed streamflow at the river basin outlets and PDSI-related components of the water cycle show that PDSI represents reasonably well processes taking place in the selected catchments. Depending on the specific scenario and catchment, droughts that in the Palmer classification were deemed as incipient, mild or severe under present climate will become a normal summer feature toward the end of this century, especially over catchments situated in the lower Danube basin

Development of a downstream emergency response service for flood and related risks in Romania based on satellite data

Recently, the National Meteorological Administration initiated and started to implement user-driven services, based on satellite remote sensing and geo-information capacities. The paper presents this downstream emergency response service whose aim is to provide updated and accurate cartographic information in river flood prevention and post-crisis phase. The service is targeted to develop an interoperable framework for the management of the available geo-information using cutting-edge techniques and satellite data in order to provide high quality and accurate spatial products. An appropriate methodology was developed and tested, in order to process the optical or radar satellite imagery, with medium and high range spatial resolution, to rapid mapping the flood extent, to integrate the information in a GIS environment and finally to obtain standardized, cartographic products. The service is able to provide customized flood geospatial products (updated reference maps for the area affected, near real-time flood delineation maps, maximum flood extent maps, flooded area classification, flood evolution maps, damage assessment maps and reports) tailored to specific users and featuring near-real time delivery. A dedicated geo-portal, was developed to display, query, analyse and retrieve the spatial products. The end-users are able to access the system using a simple web browser to view and query the flood related product archive or download the selected products

Development of a downstream emergency response service for flood and related risks in Romania based on satellite data

Recently, the National Meteorological Administration initiated and started to implement user-driven services, based on satellite remote sensing and geo-information capacities. The paper presents this downstream emergency response service whose aim is to provide updated and accurate cartographic information in river flood prevention and post-crisis phase. The service is targeted to develop an interoperable framework for the management of the available geo-information using cutting-edge techniques and satellite data in order to provide high quality and accurate spatial products. An appropriate methodology was developed and tested, in order to process the optical or radar satellite imagery, with medium and high range spatial resolution, to rapid mapping the flood extent, to integrate the information in a GIS environment and finally to obtain standardized, cartographic products. The service is able to provide customized flood geospatial products (updated reference maps for the area affected, near real-time flood delineation maps, maximum flood extent maps, flooded area classification, flood evolution maps, damage assessment maps and reports) tailored to specific users and featuring near-real time delivery. A dedicated geo-portal, was developed to display, query, analyse and retrieve the spatial products. The end-users are able to access the system using a simple web browser to view and query the flood related product archive or download the selected products

Climate Suitability for Tourism in Romania Based on HCI: Urban Climate Index in the Near-Future Climate

This study presents an assessment of climate suitability for outdoor leisure activities in Romania using the Holliday Climate Index (HCI) for the near future (2021–2040), focusing on unfavorable and good climate conditions. The analysis employs data from an ensemble of model simulations in the context of RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 climate change scenarios. The results indicate that the number of days with low weather suitability is decreasing in almost the entire country, especially during the warm season, while during the winter and spring, extended regions may be characterized by a higher number of days favorable for outdoor activities than during the current climate. An estimation of the impact of climate change on tourism flux in Romania is further carried out, suggesting that the increasing attractivity of climate conditions may lead to an increased number of tourist overnights in the near future, and this will be more pronounced in rural destinations

MODIS-based multi-parametric platform for mapping of flood affected areas. Case study: 2006 Danube extreme flood in Romania

Flooding remains the most widely distributed natural hazard in Europe, leading to significant economic and social impact. Earth observation data is presently capable of making fundamental contributions towards reducing the detrimental effects of extreme floods. Technological advance makes development of online services able to process high volumes of satellite data without the need of dedicated desktop software licenses possible. The main objective of the case study is to present and evaluate a methodology for mapping of flooded areas based on MODIS satellite images derived indices and using state-of-the-art geospatial web services. The methodology and the developed platform were tested with data for the historical flood event that affected the Danube floodplain in 2006 in Romania. The results proved that, despite the relative coarse resolution, MODIS data is very useful for mapping the development flooded area in large plain floods. Moreover it was shown, that the possibility to adapt and combine the existing global algorithms for flood detection to fit the local conditions is extremely important to obtain accurate results

MODIS-based multi-parametric platform for mapping of flood affected areas. Case study: 2006 Danube extreme flood in Romania

Flooding remains the most widely distributed natural hazard in Europe, leading to significant economic and social impact. Earth observation data is presently capable of making fundamental contributions towards reducing the detrimental effects of extreme floods. Technological advance makes development of online services able to process high volumes of satellite data without the need of dedicated desktop software licenses possible. The main objective of the case study is to present and evaluate a methodology for mapping of flooded areas based on MODIS satellite images derived indices and using state-of-the-art geospatial web services. The methodology and the developed platform were tested with data for the historical flood event that affected the Danube floodplain in 2006 in Romania. The results proved that, despite the relative coarse resolution, MODIS data is very useful for mapping the development flooded area in large plain floods. Moreover it was shown, that the possibility to adapt and combine the existing global algorithms for flood detection to fit the local conditions is extremely important to obtain accurate results

Assessment of Soil Moisture Anomaly Sensitivity to Detect Drought Spatio-Temporal Variability in Romania

This paper will assess the sensitivity of soil moisture anomaly (SMA) obtained from the Soil water index (SWI) product Metop ASCAT, to identify drought in Romania. The SWI data were converted from relative values (%) to absolute values (m3 m−3) using the soil porosity method. The conversion results (SM) were validated using soil moisture in situ measurements from ISMN at 5 cm depths (2015–2020). The SMA was computed based on a 10 day SWI product, between 2007 and 2020. The analysis was performed for the depths of 5 cm (near surface), 40 cm (sub surface), and 100 cm (root zone). The standardized precipitation index (SPI), land surface temperature anomaly (LST anomaly), and normalized difference vegetation index anomaly (NDVI anomaly) were computed in order to compare the extent and intensity of drought events. The best correlations between SM and in situ measurements are for the stations located in the Getic Plateau (Bacles (r = 0.797) and Slatina (r = 0.672)), in the Western Plain (Oradea (r = 0.693)), and in the Moldavian Plateau (Iasi (r = 0.608)). The RMSE were between 0.05 and 0.184. Furthermore, the correlations between the SMA and SPI, the LST anomaly, and the NDVI anomaly were significantly registered in the second half of the warm season (July–September). Due to the predominantly agricultural use of the land, the results can be useful for the management of water resources and irrigation in regions frequently affected by drought

Lower air pollution during COVID-19 lock-down: improving models and methods estimating ozone impacts on crops

We suggest that the unprecedented and unintended decrease of emissions of air pollutants during the COVID-19 lock-down could lead to declining seasonal ozone concentrations, and positive impacts on crop yields.. An initial assessment of the potential effects of COVID-19 emission reductions was made using a set of six scenarios that variously assumed annual European and global emission reductions of 30 % and 50 % for the energy, industry, road transport and international shipping sectors, and 80 % for the aviation sector. The greatest ozone reductions during the growing season reached up to 12 ppb over crop growing regions in Asia and up to 6 ppb in North America and Europe. In Europe, ozone responses are more sensitive to emission declines in other continents, international shipping and aviation than to emissions within Europe. We demonstrate that for wheat the overall magnitude of ozone precursor emission changes could lead to yield improvements between 2 % and 8 %. The expected magnitude of ozone precursor emission reductions during the Northern Hemisphere growing season in 2020 presents an opportunity to test and improve crop models and experimentally-based exposure response relationships of ozone impacts on crops, under real-world conditions.JRC.D.5-Food Securit