Climate change coming down hard on Europe

Green Watch Monitoring Report

Europe might be affected by key climate hazards such as droughts, floods, forest fires and sea level rise during the 21st century and beyond. These maps are based on different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios and climate models and have been published already in various EEA reports and indicators. Climate change is happening now and will get more serious in the future, even if global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions prove effective. However, the impacts will be much less severe if efforts to reduce emissions are successful in keeping the global temperature increase well below 2°C (as required by the Paris Agreement). Any higher emissions scenario would lead to considerably greater climate change.

Extreme weather and climate-related hazards such as heat waves, floods and droughts will become more frequent and intense in many regions. This will lead to adverse impacts on ecosystems, economic sectors, and human health and well-being. Therefore, minimising the risks from global climate change requires targeted actions to adapt to the impacts of climate change, in addition to actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Adaptation must be tailored to the specific circumstances in different regions and cities of Europe.

Droughts

Available studies project increases in the frequency, duration and severity of meteorological and hydrological droughts for most of Europe over the 21st century, except for parts of northern Europe. The largest increase in drought conditions is projected for southern Europe, where competition between water users such as agriculture, industry, tourism and households will increase. Farms in southern Europe could suffer significant drought-induced losses by 2100. In southern Europe, severe droughts are projected to become more frequent. Drought frequency is also projected to increase in central and western Europe whereas it may decrease in some limited regions of northern Europe.

Climate change and agriculture

Climate change affects agricultural systems in complex ways. Rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, higher temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns, including drought conditions, affect the quantity, quality and stability of food production. Food security in the EU is not expected to be at risk, but cascading impacts of climate change from outside Europe may further affect agricultural income and price levels in Europe through changes in trade patterns.

The impacts of climate change, including increasing droughts, affect agricultural production, trade and ultimately the prices of agricultural products and the incomes of farmers. Farmer’s incomes are further influenced by agricultural policies, land use policies and climate mitigation policies. However, farmers can limit the adverse impacts and enhance the beneficial impacts of climate change through suitable adaptation measures, such as adapting crop varieties, changing sowing dates and improving irrigation.

The potential benefits of adaptation are illustrated by the maps below. These estimate the changes in farmer’s income between a 2004 baseline and 2020 for a given climate and socio-economic scenario (including global price adjustments), both with and without technical adaptation measures (see the EEA report for additional explanation). Note that other studies using different scenarios and assumptions can come to rather different estimates of the economic impacts of climate change on agriculture, However, all of them agree on the importance of adaptation at the farm level and beyond.

The extent of forest fires in Europe varies a lot from year to year, driven largely by changes in weather conditions. In recent years large forest fires have affected several regions in northern and western Europe in which fires were not prevalent in the past. More European countries experienced large forest fires in 2018 than ever before, and Sweden experienced the worst fire season in reporting history. The unprecedented forest fires in several European countries in 2017 and 2018 coincided with record droughts and heatwaves. More severe fire weather and, as a consequence, substantial expansion of the fire-prone area and longer fire seasons are projected in most regions of Europe, in particular for a high emissions scenario.

The relative increase in fire danger (based on the Canadian Fire Weather Index) is projected to be particularly large in western-central Europe, but the absolute fire danger remains highest in southern Europe. Adaptation measures, such as improved fire prevention and effective fire suppression, can substantially reduce fire risks.