scholarly journals Assessment of climate change exposure of tourism in Hungary using observations and regional climate model data

2021 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-231
Author(s):  
Attila Kovács ◽  
◽  
Andrea Király ◽  

Climate constitutes key resources for tourism since it influences the range of tourism activities and the development of tourism supply. Tourism is highly sensitive to changes in climate elements. It is extremely important for adaptation strategy-making to explore whether the tourism climate conditions in a given region and at a specific time are appropriate and how they may change in the future. This is described by the exposure of the tourism sector to climate conditions and climate change. In this study, we analyse the exposure of tourism for Hungary on a district level and every month (from March to November) with the help of the modified Tourism Climate Index. First, the present conditions are evaluated based on a gridded observational database CarpatClim-HU, which forms the basis for assessing the future conditions. Afterwards, the expected future circumstances are analysed using regional climate model outputs. In order to interpret the uncertainties of the climate projections properly, we use two different model results (HIRHAM5 and RACMO22E) relying on two emission scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). The results have demonstrated that the most favourable conditions are found in spring (MAM) and autumn (SON), while in summer (JJA) a decline in climate potential is observed. According to the future tendencies, generally, a decline is expected between May and September, but the other investigated months usually bring an improvement. For a given emission scenario, the expected trend is quite similar for the two model experiments, while for a given climate model, the use of RCP8.5 scenario indicates larger changes than RCP4.5. The results prove that climate change will have an obvious impact on tourism potential in Hungary, and therefore tourism strategy development has to take into account this effect more than before.

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 1944-1961 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bariş Önol ◽  
Fredrick H. M. Semazzi

Abstract In this study, the potential role of global warming in modulating the future climate over the eastern Mediterranean (EM) region has been investigated. The primary vehicle of this investigation is the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics Regional Climate Model version 3 (ICTP-RegCM3), which was used to downscale the present and future climate scenario simulations generated by the NASA’s finite-volume GCM (fvGCM). The present-day (1961–90; RF) simulations and the future climate change projections (2071–2100; A2) are based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. During the Northern Hemispheric winter season, the general increase in precipitation over the northern sector of the EM region is present both in the fvGCM and RegCM3 model simulations. The regional model simulations reveal a significant increase (10%–50%) in winter precipitation over the Carpathian Mountains and along the east coast of the Black Sea, over the Kackar Mountains, and over the Caucasus Mountains. The large decrease in precipitation over the southeastern Turkey region that recharges the Euphrates and Tigris River basins could become a major source of concern for the countries downstream of this region. The model results also indicate that the autumn rains, which are primarily confined over Turkey for the current climate, will expand into Syria and Iraq in the future, which is consistent with the corresponding changes in the circulation pattern. The climate change over EM tends to manifest itself in terms of the modulation of North Atlantic Oscillation. During summer, temperature increase is as large as 7°C over the Balkan countries while changes for the rest of the region are in the range of 3°–4°C. Overall the temperature increase in summer is much greater than the corresponding changes during winter. Presentation of the climate change projections in terms of individual country averages is highly advantageous for the practical interpretation of the results. The consistence of the country averages for the RF RegCM3 projections with the corresponding averaged station data is compelling evidence of the added value of regional climate model downscaling.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Nam ◽  
Bente Tiedje ◽  
Susanne Pfeifer ◽  
Diana Rechid ◽  
Daniel Eggert

<p>Everyone, politicians, public administrations, business owners, and citizens want to know how climate changes will affect them locally. Having such knowledge offers everyone the opportunity to make informed choices and take action towards mitigation and adaptation.</p><p> </p><p>In order to develop locally relevant climate service products and climate advisory services, as we do at GERICS, we must extract localized climate change information from Regional Climate Model ensemble simulations.</p><p> </p><p>Common challenges associated with developing such services include the transformation of petabytes of data from physical quantities such as precipitation, temperature, or wind, into user-applicable quantities such as return periods of heavy precipitation, e.g. for legislative or construction design frequency. Other challenges include the technical and physical barriers in the use and interpretation of climate data, due to large data volume, unfamiliar software and data formats, or limited technical infrastructure. The interpretation of climate data also requires scientific background knowledge, which limit or influence the interpretation of results.</p><p> </p><p>These barriers hinder the efficient and effective transformation of big data into user relevant information in a timely and reliable manner. To enable our society to adapt and become more resilient to climate change, we must overcome these barriers. In the Helmholtz funded Digital Earth project we are tackling these challenges by developing a Climate Change Workflow.</p><p> </p><p>In the scope of this Workflow, the user can <span>easily define a region of interest and extract </span><span>the</span><span> relevant </span><span>climate data </span><span>from the simulations available </span><span>at</span><span> the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF). Following which, </span><span>a general overview of the projected changes, in precipitation </span><span>for example, for multiple climate projections is presented</span><span>. It conveys the bandwidth, </span><span>i.e. </span><span>the minimum/maximum range by an ensemble of regional climate model projections. </span><span>We implemented the sketched workflow in a web-based tool called </span><span>The Climate Change Explorer. </span><span>It</span> addresses barriers associated with extracting locally relevant climate data from petabytes of data, in unfamilar data formats, and deals with interpolation issues, using a more intuitive and user-friendly web interface.</p><p> </p><p>Ultimately, the Climate Change Explorer provides concise information on the magnitude of projected climate change and the range of these changes for individually defined regions, such as found in GERICS ‘Climate Fact Sheets’. This tool has the capacity to also improve other workflows of climate services, allowing them to dedicate more time in deriving user relevant climate indicies; enabling politicians, public administrations, and businesses to take action.</p>


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ji-Woo Lee ◽  
Suryun Ham ◽  
Song-You Hong ◽  
Kei Yoshimura ◽  
Minsu Joh

This study assesses future change of surface runoff due to climate change over Korea using a regional climate model (RCM), namely, the Global/Regional Integrated Model System (GRIMs), Regional Model Program (RMP). The RMP is forced by future climate scenario, namely, A1B of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). The RMP satisfactorily reproduces the observed seasonal mean and variation of surface runoff for the current climate simulation. The distribution of monsoonal precipitation-related runoff is adequately captured by the RMP. In the future (2040–2070) simulation, it is shown that the increasing trend of temperature has significant impacts on the intra-annual runoff variation. The variability of runoff is increased in summer; moreover, the strengthened possibility of extreme occurrence is detected in the future climate. This study indicates that future climate projection, including surface runoff and its variability over Korea, can be adequately addressed on the RMP testbed. Furthermore, this study reflects that global warming affects local hydrological cycle by changing major water budget components. This study adduces that the importance of runoff should not be overlooked in regional climate studies, and more elaborate presentation of fresh-water cycle is needed to close hydrological circulation in RCMs.


2017 ◽  
pp. 189-195
Author(s):  
N.S. Loboda ◽  
Y.V. Bozhok

The actuality of research is conditioned by necessity of water regime determination under climate change for substantiate management its water resources in future. The purpose of investigation is evaluation of changes in water resources of Kuyalnyk Liman catchment under climate change. The main method of research is model "climate- runoff ", developed at the Odessa State Environmental University. Database of global climate change scenarios A1B (realized in regional climate model REMO) and A2 (developed under the regional climate model RCA) was used. The analysis of fluctuation regularity of climatic factors of the flow formation on the Kuyalnyk  Liman catchment and surrounding areas according to selected scenarios using  difference-integral curves are done. Changes in precipitation and the maximum possible evaporation for the 30-year intervals up to the year 2100 (scenario A1D) or up to the year 2050 (scenario A2) are analyzed. The main tendencies in water resources of Kuyalnyk Liman using the model "climate- runoff" in the future are established. It is shown that according to the scenario A1B by the middle of XXI century possible reduction of water resources in the Kuyalnyk Liman catchment is 40%. According to the scenario A2 water resources in northern part of the basin can grow on average by 20-30%, and in the southern part runoff can be reduced on average by 10%.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ole B. Christensen ◽  
Erik Kjellström ◽  
Christian Dieterich ◽  
Matthias Gröger ◽  
H. E. Markus Meier

Abstract. The Baltic Sea Region is very sensitive to climate change; it is a region with spatially varying climate and diverse ecosystems, but also under pressure due to high population in large parts of the area. Climate change impacts could easily exacerbate other anthropogenic stressors such as biodiversity stress from society and eutrophication of the Baltic Sea considerably. Therefore, there has been a focus on estimations of future climate change and its impacts in recent research. In this review paper, we will concentrate on a presentation of recent climate projections from both atmosphere-only and coupled atmosphere-ocean regional climate models. The recent regional climate model projections strengthen the picture from previous assessments. This includes a strong warming, in particular in the north in winter. Precipitation is projected to increase in the whole region apart from the southern half during summer. Consequently, the new results lend more credibility to estimates of uncertainties and robust features of future climate change. Furthermore, the larger number of scenarios gives opportunities to better address impacts of mitigation measures. The coupled atmosphere-ocean model locally modifies the climate change signal relative to that in the stand-alone atmosphere regional climate model. Differences are largest in areas where the coupled system arrives at different sea-surface temperatures and sea-ice conditions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (8) ◽  
pp. 2621-2635 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Zittis ◽  
Panos Hadjinicolaou ◽  
Marina Klangidou ◽  
Yiannis Proestos ◽  
Jos Lelieveld

AbstractObservation and model-based studies have identified the Mediterranean region as one of the most prominent climate change “hot-spots.” Parts of this distinctive region are included in several Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) domains such as those for Europe, Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East/North Africa. In this study, we compile and analyze monthly temperature and precipitation fields derived from regional climate model simulations performed over different CORDEX domains at a spatial resolution of 50 km. This unique multi-model, multi-scenario, and multi-domain “super-ensemble” is used to update projected changes for the Mediterranean region. The statistical robustness and significance of the climate change signal is assessed. By considering information from more than one CORDEX domains, our analysis addresses an additional type of uncertainty that is often neglected and is related to the positioning of the regional climate model domain. CORDEX simulations suggest a general warming by the end of the century (between 1 and 5 °C with respect to the 1986–2005 reference period), which is expected to be strongest during summer (up to 7 °C). A general drying (between 10 and 40%) is also inferred for the Mediterranean. However, the projected precipitation change signal is less significant and less robust. The CORDEX ensemble corroborates the fact that the Mediterranean is already entering the 1.5 °C climate warming era. It is expected to reach 2 °C warming well within two decades, unless strong greenhouse gas concentration reductions are implemented. The southern part of the Mediterranean is expected to be impacted most strongly since the CORDEX ensemble suggests substantial combined warming and drying, particularly for pathways RCP4.5 and RCP8.5.


2006 ◽  
Vol 54 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 9-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Grum ◽  
A.T. Jørgensen ◽  
R.M. Johansen ◽  
J.J. Linde

That we are in a period of extraordinary rates of climate change is today evident. These climate changes are likely to impact local weather conditions with direct impacts on precipitation patterns and urban drainage. In recent years several studies have focused on revealing the nature, extent and consequences of climate change on urban drainage and urban runoff pollution issues. This study uses predictions from a regional climate model to look at the effects of climate change on extreme precipitation events. Results are presented in terms of point rainfall extremes. The analysis involves three steps: Firstly, hourly rainfall intensities from 16 point rain gauges are averaged to create a rain gauge equivalent intensity for a 25 × 25 km square corresponding to one grid cell in the climate model. Secondly, the differences between present and future in the climate model is used to project the hourly extreme statistics of the rain gauge surface into the future. Thirdly, the future extremes of the square surface area are downscaled to give point rainfall extremes of the future. The results and conclusions rely heavily on the regional model's suitability in describing extremes at time-scales relevant to urban drainage. However, in spite of these uncertainties, and others raised in the discussion, the tendency is clear: extreme precipitation events effecting urban drainage and causing flooding will become more frequent as a result of climate change.


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