, the assessment of the climate change impacts in Greece was carried out directly with input of parameters calculated at global scale from global climate models (GCM). Problems from such approach may rise due to the inability of the global scale parameters to capture the effects of complexity of local topography and land use as well as the effects of the large number of islands of the country.
In the current project, emphasis was placed on the design of a methodology framework for the estimation of climate change effects in Greece by calculating the climatic parameters at rather high horizontal resolution and focusing on the social and economic impacts of the estimated climate variation at local scale.
The research activity framework included the following:
A. The state-of-the-art climate change-meteorology-air pollution modelling system Global-Regional Climate Air Pollution Modelling System (GRE-CAPS) developed by members of our team was applied for the first time to Europe and Greece.
B. A dynamical downscaling methodology was developed to input the global model results from GISS II’ CGM (resolution of ~5 x 4) to the regional model WRF to calculate the climatic parameters on a grid of 9×9 km2. Globally, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) emission scenarios A1B, A1FI and A2 were used. The Greek scenarios included both changes similar to Europe as well as proportionally larger or smaller changes.
C. The results of the simulations were analyzed both in terms of changes in average climatic parameters (temperature, humidity, rainfall, etc.) and concentrations of pollutants (ozone, particulates, etc.) and in terms of extreme conditions.
D. In the final stage of the project impacts in specific areas of Greece were linked to the previous outputs. These areas included Western Macedonia, Western Greece and the Greek Islands. The aim was to assess the socio-economic impacts of these changes locally. Those applications had the form of case studies to develop the corresponding methodology.
The outputs were made available on a public website (). In this way the Greek scientific community and corresponding stakeholders may have access to the project results. Moreover, local authorities other than those being directly involved in this project could use a similar analysis for the regions of their interest.
Partners
1. Environmental Research Laboratory, INRASTES, NCSRD (coordination)
2. Foundation For Research & Technology- Hellas – Institute Of Chemical Engineering, FORTH-ICT
3. Company For Development of the city of Kozani, ANKO
4. Development Municipal Company Of Patras, ADEP
5. Tilos Park Association, TPA