Projects

Global climate variability is to a large extent triggered by changes in the North Atlantic sea surface state. In this project, VITO deals with the impact on urban societies.

Our goals are:

1. Downscaling of the spatially coarse resolution CMIP5 climate predictions to the urban scale, with particular focus on regions where North Atlantic SST variability and changes have a significant influence on the climate
2. Applying the UrbClim model to obtain climate information at the urban scale from the CMIP5 forecast experiments, involving local stakeholders in the process
3. Investigating the relation between heat waves and the urban-rural temperature increment (urban heat island effect)
4. Coupling the high-resolution urban climate prediction fields to relevant socio-economic data, focusing on the health
5. Combining predicted urban climate fields with spatially explicit vulnerability maps (population density and typology, housing quality, age structure …) in order to produce heat risk maps

The spatial downscaling will be achieved by means of the UrbClim urban climate model developed in recent years at VITO. Three cities have been selected for mapping: the model will be run on these three cities.

Website:  http://naclim.zmaw.de

Number of heat wave days for Almada (left), Berlin (center) and Antwerp (right), average for the period 1985-2005 during June-July-August according to the definition of the EuroHEAT project.