Climatology and Scenarios up to the 2050S

Extreme weather impacts on European networks of transport Grant Nr 233919 Co-funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme, Transport, Horizontal activities D2.1 Probabilities of adverse weather affecting transport in Europe: climatology and scenarios up to the 2050s Project: EWENT Document Number and Title: D2.1 (In DoW: Geographical mapping and final report the probabilities of weather extremes and harmful events and scenarios in Europe) Work-Package: WP2 Deliverable Type: Report Contractual Date of Delivery: 31.1.2011 Actual Date of Delivery: 19.8.2011 Author/Responsible(s): FMI Contributors: FMI: Andrea Vajda, Heikki Tuomenvirta, Pauli, Jokinen, Anna Luomaranta VTT: Lasse Makkonen, Maria Tikanmäki ESSL: Pieter Groenemeijer Foreca: Pirkko Saarikivi CYMET: Silas Michaelides, Matheos Papada- kis, Filippos Tymvios, Spyros Athanasatos Approval of this report: by the EC Summary of this report: Keyword List: WP3, D2, EWENT, extreme weather, transport system, consequences Dissemination level: Public (PU) Grant No. 233919 Version history Version Date Status Author (Partner) Description 1 01.11.2010 1st draft Heikki Tuomenvirta, Andrea outline Vajda, Pauli Jokinen (FMI) 2 13.04.2011 2nd draft Andrea Vajda, Heikki Tuo- first version menvirta, Pauli Jokinen (FMI) 3 10.05.2011 3rd draft Andrea Vajda, Heikki Tuo- nearly complete versi- menvirta, Pauli Jokinen (FMI) on 4 14.05.2011 4th draft Andrea Vajda, Heikki Tuo- complete menvirta, Pauli Jokinen (FMI) 5 01.07.2011 final Andrea Vajda, Heikki Tuo- complete with partners menvirta, Pauli Jokinen (FMI) comments included Distribution list European Commission Ioana-Olga Adamescu EWENT partners E-mail list EWENT Steering Committee E-mail list Website http://ewent.vtt.fi This publication has been produced with the assistance of the European Union. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibil- ity of EWENT Consortium and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union. 2/94 Grant No. 233919 Executive summary Adverse and extreme weather events, such as heavy rain, heavy snowfall, strong winds, extreme heat and cold, drought and reduced visibility can have negative impact on the transport sector, causing injuries and damages as well as other economic losses. Frequency and intensity of weather and climate extremes are likely to continue to change in the future due to the projected climate change; consequences of changes will be both negative and positive for transportation. The EWENT project (Extreme Weather impacts on European Networks of Transport) funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme (Transport, Horizontal Activities) has the objective of assessing extreme weather impacts on the European transport system. This Deliverable frames the findings of Work Package 2 (WP 2) of the EWENT project. The WP 2 focuses firstly on providing a comprehensive climatology of the adverse and extreme weather events affecting the European transport system by estimating the frequency (or probability) of phenomena for the present climate focusing mostly on the time period 1971-2000. Secondly, it pro- vides an overview of projected changes in the adverse and extreme weather events that are most likely to affect the European transport network in the future climate until the 2050s. The analysis of the relevant weather phenomena takes into account the ranking and impact threshold values defined from the viewpoint of different transport modes and infrastructure within WP1. Three impact threshold indices were studied for each of the following phenomenon: wind, snow, blizzard, heavy precipitation, cold spell and heat wave. In addition, visibility conditions de- termined by fog and dust events, small-scale phenomena affecting transport system, such as thunderstorms, lightning, large hail and tornadoes and events damaging infrastructure of the transport system have been analysed. In order to estimate the frequency and probability of past extreme weather phenomena we have applied the following data sets: E-OBS European high resolution land-only gridded dataset, the ECMWF provided ERA-Interim re-analysis dataset, the European Severe Weather Database (ESWD), the NOAA National Climatic Data Centre database, the METAR aviation weather report data, observational data from meteorological services and road weather network. Future changes in the probability of adverse and extreme weather phenomena are assessed based on six high resolution (ca. 25x25 km2) Regional Climate Model (RCM) simulations produced in the ENSEMBLES project. The studied time horizons are the 2020s (2011-2040) and the 2050s (2041-2070). The analysis of the observational data draws a regional distinction in the probability of extreme weather events over the European continent. Northern Europe and the Alpine region are the most impacted by winter extremes, such as snowfall, cold spell and winter storms, while the probability of extreme heat spells is the highest in Southern Europe. Extreme winds and blizzards are the most common over the Atlantic and along its shores. Although heavy rainfall may impact on yearly basis the whole continent, the very extreme rainfall events (over 100 mm/24 h) are relative sparse. Visibility conditions indicate a pan-European improvement over the studied decades, severe fog conditions becoming almost non-existent at some of the main European airports. 3/94 Grant No. 233919 The multimodel mean climate projections indicate robust changes in temperature extreme, but less coherent in precipitation and wind extremes. Both cold extremes and snow events are likely to be- come rarer, especially in the north where the extreme cold might shorten by 30-40 days/year by the 2050s. This change involves a positive impact on road, rail and air transportation reducing the cost of maintenance. On the other hand, heavy snowfalls (>10 cm/day) are not expected decrease, instead models project 1-5 days/year increase over Scandinavia. Extreme heat is likely to intensify over the entire continent, being more accentuated in the south (by 30-40 days/year). Due to this intensification, by 2050s the Central European countries are expected to experience as many heat spells as currently in the Mediterranean region. Heavy rainfall events indicate less significant change (1-5 days/year) or no change (e.g. in Mediterranean) for the future climate scenarios. Changes in wind extreme were more difficult to assess, since the models displayed somewhat con- flicting results. The analysis of the Baltic Sea ice cover indicates a probable decrease in the frequency of severe ice winters. The average maximum fast ice thickness becomes thinner every- where in the area, in the southern parts the sea ice will possibly disappear totally by 2060. Al- though the changes in probabilities of thunderstorm-related hazards in the future climate have not been approached in the present project, earlier studies were not able to indicate changes in thunderstorm occurrence over Europe. However, the fraction of thunderstorms that may develop haz- ardous phenomena such as hail, severe wind gusts and tornadoes may increase. Due to the various climatic patterns, different regions of Europe are impacted by different extremes. In order to facilitate the assessment of impacts and consequences of extremes phenomena on European levels we created a map of the European climate zones. Based on the frequency and probability analysis we differentiated six main climate regions. Future changes in the frequency of weather extremes for the major European transportation nodes (ports, airports, road, rail and inland transportation) and corridors are also derived based on six RCMs. The RCM projections provide plausible scenarios of detailed regional change, consistent with larger-scale changes lying within the wider uncertainty envelope defined by the three GCM projections driving the simulations of six RCMs used in this project. The low number of climate models used did not allow probabilistic quantification of uncertainty, however, the range of projected changes is shown. Our study suggests that changes in adverse and extreme weather events affecting the European transportation network are of both signs. Extreme heat events are likely to increase in many regions, most accentuated in south, on the other hand extreme cold and snow events are expected to decline. However due to variability from year to year, winter extremes are still expected to haz- ard the transportation. 4/94 Grant No. 233919 Table of contents 1. INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................7 2. CLIMATOLOGY OF ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS AFFECTING TRANSPORT.......................................................................................................................9 2.1. Description of gridded observational data sets .................................................................................... 9 2.2. Description of the European Severe Weather Database.................................................................. 12 2.3. The extreme value analysis method used............................................................................................. 13 2.3.1. The General Extreme Value Function GEV.............................................................................................. 13 2.3.2. Plotting positions ........................................................................................................................................ 14

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