Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe ... - MemoFin.fr

Climate impacts on socio-economic systems and healthstudy of weather-related disasters (Visser et al.,2012), trend patterns in disaster burden, in termsof people affected and economic loss, are difficultto explain since several interlinked factors play arole. These include: changes in wealth, changesin population numbers, changes in intensity orfrequency of extreme weather events, and changesin vulnerability. Therefore, a direct attributionof changes in disaster burden to one specificfactor, such as climate change, should be avoided(Visser et al., 2012).ProjectionsClimate change is expected to affect the frequencyand severity of extreme weather events (IPCC,2012). Long-term climate extremes, such as heatwaves and droughts, are expected to increase,while the direction of changes is uncertain forshort-term meteorological extremes, such as storms(see Section 2.2.6). Model projections show a likelyincrease for hydrological extremes (i.e. floods). Suchan increase is more likely for coastal floods due toprojected sea-level rise (see Section 3.2.2) than forriver floods (see Section 3.3.3).While there are no comprehensive projections onhealth risks of climate change in Europe, someestimates of the projected health impacts related tocoastal and river floods, temperature, as well as onair quality and a food-borne disease (salmonellosis),are available through EU research projects (Feyenand Watkiss, 2011; Kovats et al., 2011; Watkiss andHunt, 2012). They are presented with the respectiveindicators in the remainder of this section (see alsoSection 5.5.2).Figure 4.6Number of reported extreme weather events and wildfire in EEA member andcollaborating countries (1980–2011)Number of events90807060504030201001980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010Drought and mass movement dry Wildfire Heat waveFlood and mass movement wet Storm Cold eventSource:EM-DAT/CRED.Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2012187