Scenarios for resilience and climate adaptation strategies in Tenerife (Canary Islands): Three pathways towards 2040

A participatory scenario building process for small island resilience is carried out for the Tenerife Island (Canary Islands, Spain). The plot of the scenarios is based on institutional analyses and participatory techniques where key local stakeholders and citizens were engaged. A press analysis was done in order to identify the main narratives regarding the current level of resilience and its potentialities in the future, as well as to identify the stakeholders involved in the discourse. Meanwhile, in-depth interviews, questionnaires and focus groups were carried out to engage the stakeholders and local citizens in the exploration of futures scenarios for resilience in Tenerife. The scenarios brought out three potential pathways for 2040. The first scenario prolongs the current business as usual situation where the island may be defined as highly vulnerable to external shocks, especially due to its high external dependency on food and energy production, as well as the need for energy allocated to water desalination. The second scenario relies on an active local community that encourages increasing rates of local food production and a 100% renewable energy system such that desalination may no longer depend on fossil fuels. Lastly, the third scenario depicts a pathway where several active groups of people engages in building resilience without the umbrella of local governments, due to politicians are no longer seen as part of the solution, but part of the problem. Now, collaborative community networks in bioagriculture, fog-water collection, and cooperative-based renewable energy production become increasingly important. Findings show that resilience is understood as the reinforcement of the nexus between water-energy-food sovereignty that might imply a change in the local economic model such that poverty can be reduced and climatic shocks can be buffered.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Covenant of Mayors: key criteria for adaptation to climate change in local plans

Global warming has been stated to be unequivocal and human influenced. The emissions and atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased to a degree that they are producing disturbances to the world climatic system. Several climate change impacts have occurred, while others will occur or will be intensified in the future. Ocean acidification, sea-level rise and extreme weather events are some of the projected impacts which, in addition, might have negative effects on the environment, society and the economy. These effects need to be addressed in order to reduce vulnerability to climatic hazards by means of climate change adaptation planning. However, adaptation is a rather unknown topic for many cities that have been focusing more on climate change mitigation. The new Covenant of Mayors (CoM), launched in 2015, includes adaptation to climate change as one of the three main pillars of local action towards 2050: mitigation, adaptation and secure affordable and sustainable access to Energy. The covenant signatories share a common vision to 2050 based on: — Decarbonised territories, thus contributing to keeping average global warming well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, in line with the international climate agreement reached at COP 21 in Paris in December 2015. — More resilient territories, thus preparing for the unavoidable adverse impacts of climate change. — Universal access to secure, sustainable and affordable energy services for all, thus enhancing quality of life and improving energy security. The JRC, as technical and scientific support actor should assure the CoM soundness and provide guidance to support climate change adaptation planning and implementation to signatory cities. The aim of this report is to stablish the rationale behind the essential requirements for successful adaptation in the frame of the CoM, based on literature review and Joint Research Centre’s knowledge on climate change adaptation. The results of this report highlight the need for identification of current and future climatic hazards, an inventory of critical infrastructure, active stakeholder and citizen participation, maladaptation avoidance, and an estimation of adaptation action costs.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Climate change impacts and adaptation in Europe, focusing on extremes and adaptation until the 2030s

This document reports the results of the analyses performed within the framework of the PESETA3 project regarding the Task 9 - Droughts. The main objective of this task is to provide robust scientific-based information to stakeholders and decision makers on the possible impacts of future climate scenarios on the occurrence of drought events. This report is focused on the analysis of the variations of soil moisture on the European continent, as well as of a soil moisture-based drought severity indicator (DSI), in order to evaluate the possible increase/decrease in future occurrence and severity of soil drought events and the related hazard and risk. Following the guideline of the project, five bias-corrected climatological datasets were used to force the LISFLOOD hydrological model that produces the daily soil moisture maps used in this analysis. These datasets were part of the EURO-CORDEX package and were used to characterize both the present reference period (1981-2010) and the future scenario at the date when a global 2 °C warming will occur according to the RCP8.5 scenario (different for each dataset and around the mid of the century). In the framework of this project, considering the specific purpose of the report, only the RCP8.5 scenario was selected in order to provide a clear indication on the possible future impacts of a strong climate change. The most relevant findings of the analysis depicted a scenario with differences that are statistically significant only on a limited fraction of the continental territories, with negative impacts limited to the Mediterranean and South-western Europe area for both soil moisture (reduction in water availability during both the dry and the wet season) and extreme drought events (increase in drought hazard). Particularly concerning is the increase of drought hazard over areas that are already drought prone and characterized by semi-arid climate, even if a limited impact on drought risk is expected due to the low present exposure and vulnerability of the same regions. Overall, it appears clear from this study that the EU goal to limit the global warming at 2 °C, as compared to the average temperature in pre-industrial times, will confine the variations in drought impacts to a minor fraction of the European continent in the near future, as shown by the obtained results.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Focus groups desarrollados en Tenerife para la elaboración de escenarios de adaptación al cambio climático: transcripciones completas

Tenerife ha venido registrando no sólo un aumento general de la temperatura media anual de 1,5° C en el último siglo (en el Parque Nacional del Teide), sino también un incremento en la frecuencia e intensidad de las olas de calor. La estabilidad atmosférica producida por la llegada de estas olas de calor, junto a las emisiones industriales y de diferentes medios de transporte, ha venido favoreciendo la concentración de contaminantes, superando los límites establecidos. Del mismo modo, se ha venido registrando también aumentos en la llegada de aire sahariano del norte de África, especialmente en invierno. Tanto las olas de calor, como el polvo sahariano y la contaminación atmosférica generan impactos en los ecosistemas y población locales. Cambios en la distribución de los ecosistemas e incendios forestales parecen ser los impactos más relevantes en el medio ambiente. Por otra parte, la salud de las personas se ve también afectada por estas amenazas, tanto en términos de mortalidad (especialmente relacionado con las olas de calor) como de morbilidad (derivado de las olas de calor y la contaminación del aire, tanto natural como antropogénica). Los problemas existentes derivados de dichas amenazas, hacen necesaria la exploración de políticas públicas que favorezcan la adaptación a las mismas. En este trabajo se presentan los resultados obtenidos en tres sesiones de focus group que tuvieron lugar a lo largo de la Isla en Noviembre de 2016, con el objetivo de involucrar a la población local en la búsqueda de acciones que permitan la adaptación al creciente calor, la llegada de aire sahariano y la contaminación del aire. En este informe se ofrecen las trascripciones de lo expresado en dichos focus group por los ciudadanos que decidieron participar en los mismos. Los focus group se realizaron en los municipios de San Cristóbal de La Laguna, La Orotava e Icod de los Vinos. Uno de los principales resultados obtenidos es que la población local percibe el problema no como una cuestión de adaptación al cambio climático, sino de resiliencia insular frente a shocks externos, sean estos ambientales, políticos o económicos. Estos resultados serán utilizados para la elaboración de escenarios de resiliencia para la isla de Tenerife.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Covenant of Mayors’ Annual Report

In this report we have analysed the submission of vulnerability risk assessments and adaptation actions of 40 European local authorities in the framework of the Covenant of Mayors. According to the information received from the signatories, Northern Europe and Central North Europe will face a multi-hazard scenario in the future, whereas Central Europe South and Southern Europe are already facing multi-hazard events. Hazardous events are expected to intensify in all regions. Climate hazards are likely to impact several municipal sectors, especially “land use planning”. Floods, extreme heat, landslides, extreme precipitation, and sea level rise are expected to influence land uses in most regions. Adaptation actions differ depending on the hazard tackled and the climate region considered. However, further “studies” is a common adaptation action proposed across all regions, pointing to the need for additional assessments. Not surprisingly, actions with a large infrastructure component like flood protection systems appear as the most costly action type. Lastly, a range of remaining gaps have been identified in the analysis, and need careful attention, such as improvement of stakeholder and citizen engagement, improvement of planning actions (which includes reducing the inconsistencies between the risk and vulnerability assessment and the actions proposed), and better address the risk of implementing maladaptation actions.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

2018 - Drought and Water Crisis in Southern Africa

The results presented in this short technical report are focused on the 2018 Water Crisis that affected the Western Cape Province in South Africa. In one side it includes an analysis carried out by the JRC´s "Disaster Risk Management" Unit and the Global Drought Observatory (GDO report), which periodically provides an overview of precipitation patterns and its anomalies, including also those related to vegetation greenness and soil moisture values respect to the long term average. In the other, it presents a complementary section carried out by the WEFE4DEV Work Package of the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems (WEFE) Project which contributes to the online African Atlas on WEFE Cooperation. The analysis is focused on the medium to long term spatio-temporal patterns and behaviour of precipitation and temperature patterns. Both help the community to better understand the exceptional character of these phonomena, their periodicity and the scale at which these events occur. The outcomes are helpful for policymakers to identify current and future issues that impact water management, food and energy security in Africa, as well as they providevaluable information to better define mitigation measures, resilience and adaptation policies.JRC.D.2-Water and Marine Resource

CAN INTRA-CYCLIC FORCE VARIATION BE A VALUABLE PARAMETER TO EVALUATE THE FORCES EXERTED BY SWIMMERS?

The purpose of this study was to examine the force pattern produced during the front crawl swimming cycle, plus to analyze possible relationships of intra-cyclic force variation (dF) with swimming performance. Thirty four competitive swimmers, representing various levels of competitive performance (17.2 ± 2.72 yrs; 1.76 ± 0.09 m; 67.4 ± 9.94 kg; personal best 100 m long course freestyle swimming: 58.39 ± 2.19 s), randomly performed the tethered and free swimming tests. The free swimming velocity was found to be negatively correlated with dF (r = -0.85; p < 0.001). Adding dF with maximum impulse per cycle into a multiple regression model, it was possible to explain 87.6% of the 50 m performance variation. This novel parameter (dF) showed to be a valuable variable to evaluate the swimmers ability to effectively apply force in the water

Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy: adaptation to climate change - Evaluation procedure and assessment criteria

The European Commission's Joint Research Centre checks the eligibility of the Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAP) and carries out an analysis of the information submitted by the EU Covenant of Mayors signatories. This quality control is carried out by means of a set of assessment criteria that contributes to guaranteeing the credibility and reliability of the whole Covenant of Mayors initiative. The evaluation criteria are divided in five sub-components: compliance with the time frame, completeness, coherence, quantification, and progress. Only the mandatory criteria can be used to decide on the eligibility of the SECAP. The remaining evaluation criteria are only analysed to formulate recommendations to the signatories.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Annual Progress Report of the European and Global Drought Observatories

With this report, the reader finds an overview of the changes, upgrades and new features created in the European Drought Observatory (EDO) and the Global Drought Observatory (GDO) and made in 2019. The year proved relatively quiet concerning drought events in Europe; the subcontinent was only affected in the Baltics, although fires broke out vigorously in the Balkans, Spain and Russia. Thanks to the recent juvenile concern with regard to the heating up of the climate, drought events and forest fires drew more public-attention. Our reaction upon this concern in the Global Drought Observatory is the development of a new group of data, which we call Drought Mitigation. With more people genuinely concerned in the effect of our alternation of the properties of the lower atmosphere, we take up the task to provide guidelines for repair and adaptation. Higher temperatures imply that air depletes more vapour from vegetation and soil, leading to more intense droughts or floods. Consient management of our fresh water resources and massive tree planting are measures that can have significant impact on the effects of a Drought, Forest Fires or also Flood events. Therefore, we started with including the results of the often-cited research result regarding reforestation potential of the Crowther Lab as a layer in the Global Drought Observatory. We completed our work with enriching data describing dams with data regarding the location, name and quantitative characteristics of dams as an additional layer. We worked on the integration of the GRACE Dataset, which gives us an actualized satellite born, insight in the depletion of groundwater resources. We created a new index, alerting drought impacts on protected wetlands. Droughts events in these areas might affect rare species living in these protected wetlands, thus creating a link to the biodiversity crisis. The drought alerting mechanism we developed thus far were human centred. With this new index and with the Crowther Lab reforestation inventory we hope to correct this one species view of the past, learning to share our territory with all species, also during hard times of a drought disaster. With these additions, we hope that EDO and GDO will give you a better overview of the impacts of drought events, not only for our economy but also for our shared ecosystems and their services to us. Finally note that we engage in a project to export EDO and GDO knowledge and software to African regional partners. Thus enabling them to set up drought observatories in Africa just as if we did for South- and Central America. Such a collaboration works both ways, we understand better the impacts of Drought events in their region and we learn from their practical skills with regard to make things work in a challenging environment, whilst we can give them working drought observatory software, practical manners to, almost, fully automate the filling and updating of the systems combined with our specific expertise on droughts build up in the last 12 years.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

GROWTH AND QUALITY OF ‘PÉROLA’ PINEAPPLE AS A FUNCTION OF LEVELS OF GIBBERELLIC ACID

Gibberellin is a plant hormone capable of enhancing the productivity of plant’s productivity rants, due to its action in plant physiology, mainly in fruit formation. In this sense, this study aimed to evaluate gibberellic acid levels and application times on the growth and quality of ‘Pérola’ pineapple. The experiment was conducted under field conditions in the municipality of Pedras de Fogo, state of Paraíba, Brazil. The treatments consisted of five levels of gibberellic acid (0.0, 1.5, 3.0, 6.0, and 12.0 mg/plant), distributed in a randomized block experimental design, with four repetitions, in which three applications were made at 50, 80, and 110 days after flower induction. The soluble solids content, fruit height, fruit diameter, and weight were evaluated. The period of application and the levels of gibberellic acid altered the responses for the variables analyzed. The level of 7.5 mg/plant of gibberellic acid promoted an increase in the weight and diameter of the fruit. The application at 110 days after floral induction induced an increase in fruit weight and a greater concentration of sugar in the fruit. Further studies on the application of gibberellic acid and periods of application in different soil and climatic conditions should be carried out to determine more consistent results with this crop.Gibberellin is a plant hormone capable of enhancing the productivity of plant’s productivity rants, due to its action in plant physiology, mainly in fruit formation. In this sense, this study aimed to evaluate gibberellic acid levels and application times on the growth and quality of ‘Pérola’ pineapple. The experiment was conducted under field conditions in the municipality of Pedras de Fogo, state of Paraíba, Brazil. The treatments consisted of five levels of gibberellic acid (0.0, 1.5, 3.0, 6.0, and 12.0 mg/plant), distributed in a randomized block experimental design, with four repetitions, in which three applications were made at 50, 80, and 110 days after flower induction. The soluble solids content, fruit height, fruit diameter, and weight were evaluated. The period of application and the levels of gibberellic acid altered the responses for the variables analyzed. The level of 7.5 mg/plant of gibberellic acid promoted an increase in the weight and diameter of the fruit. The application at 110 days after floral induction induced an increase in fruit weight and a greater concentration of sugar in the fruit. Further studies on the application of gibberellic acid and periods of application in different soil and climatic conditions should be carried out to determine more consistent results with this crop