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A presentation in the International Conference on Adaptation of Transport Networks to Climate Change, Alexandroupolis, Greece, 25-26/06/2012 United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
Greece’s Institutes and Organizations have carried out a number of studies on climate change and have prepared at the request of the Government strategic plans for Climate Change, the Wetlands Management and on Desertification but no plans were prepared for the Integrated Management of the Water Resources and the Wetlands. The meeting at Athens gives the opportunity to the participants from Greece to appreciate the climate change and climate change impacts and provides the forum for discussions and exchange of information, know-how and expertise on the subjects that are related to the climatic change. The Mediterranean countries due to the scarcity of water are very vulnerable to climatic conditions and must get ready to study the effects and prepare their action plans.
CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION
Greece is set to meet its Kyoto target, while the main contribution to reducing energyrelated CO2 emissions to meet its 2020 EU target will come from measures on renewable energy, fuel switching and energy efficiency. The government is encouraged to focus on cost‐effectiveness and to prioritise economic instruments when incorporating these measures into a coherent whole.
Because of its strong reliance on oil and lignite, primary energy supply in Greece is the most carbon‐intensive among the IEA member countries. The government is fully aware that this will have to change and is dedicated to greening the economy. Greece has a large potential for wind and solar energy and is rightly determined to increase its use.
The renewable energy sector also holds promise for job creation, in particular if linked with research and development (R&D) activities.
This report constitutes a resubmission of Greece of the information under the Article 3(2) of the Monitoring Mechanism Decision (Commission Decision 280/2004/EC), concerning the “Projections of GHG Emissions and the National Policies and Measures which limit and/or reduce greenhouse gas emissions by sources or enhance removals by sinks.” Integral element of this submission is the Article 3(2) reporting template excel file version 4.2 (20090515_MM_Article_3_2__Reporting_Template_v4.2_GR).
Presentation of th emodels for Greece
Sea level changes are typically caused by several natural phenomena, including ocean thermal expansion, glacial melt from Greenland and Antarctica. According to the IPCC projections, global average sea level is expected to rise, through the twenty-first century, between 0.18 and 0.86 cm. Such a rise in sea level will significantly impact coastal areas, especially of lowland, areas with very low altitude which have a coastal residential development with a variety of economic activities. The paper intends to identify, how will affect the sea level rise the coastal areas of Platamonas and Neoi Poroi at South Pieria. The inundation model based upon most recent scenarios of SLR, by the year 2100 using GIS. The results indicate that coastal area of Platamonas will be affected by a SLR up to 1m. The SLR will affect part of the shoreline and the coastal area. On the other hand the coastal area of Neoi Poroi shows a high vulnerability at the SLR. By 2100 the whole region will be inundation by a SLR up to 1m.
Recently, there is a great global awareness for the impacts of climate change. The accelerated Sea Level Rise (SLR) is the most unpredictable result of the climate change that has been identified. It is clear that the hazards and the risks associated with the SLR will cause an increasing cost to the society and the ecosystem based on the increasing coastal erosion and flooding. This is likely to have serious accelerating adverse effect on the Greek coastline, of both the coastal zones and the islands, over the next years unless policies are changed. In this context, a number of measures and strategies, through a typological approach of the most vulnerable Coastal Spatial Entities, should be implemented. The key prerequisite, to ensure successful shoreline management operations, is monitoring and evaluation of them to the new spatial and ecological data, in short and long- term planning. The principle, on which the analysis and the recommendations are based on, is the Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) approach. This principle identifies mitigation solutions that seek to be innovative, cost-effective and socially acceptable.
A. Loukas, L. Vasiliades, and J. Tzabiras, 2008, Climate change effects on drought severity. Adv. Geosci., 17, 23–29, 2008. www.adv-geosci.net/17/23/2008/
Abstract- This paper evaluates climate change effects on drought severity in the region of Thessaly, Greece. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) has been used for estimation of drought severity. A geographical information system is applied for the division of Thessaly region to twelve hydrological homogeneous areas based on their geomorphology. Mean monthly precipitation values from 50 precipitation stations of Thessaly for the hydrological period October 1960–September 1990 were used for the estimation of mean areal precipitation. These precipitation timeseries have been used for the estimation of Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) for multiple time scales (1-, 3-, 6-, 9-, and 12- months) for each sub-basin or area. The outputs of Global Circulation Model CGCM2 were applied for two socioeconomic scenarios, namely, SRES A2 and SRES B2 for the assessment of climate change impact on droughts. The GCM outputs were downscaled to the region of Thessaly using a statistical methodology to estimate precipitation time series for two future periods 2020–2050 and 2070–2100. A method has been proposed for the estimation of annual cumulative drought severity-time scale-frequency curves. These curves integrate the drought severity and frequency for various types of drought. The SPI timeseries and annual weighted cumulative drought severity were estimated and compared with the respective timeseries and values of the historical period 1960–1990. The results showed that the annual drought severity is increased for all hydrological areas and SPI time scales, with the socioeconomic scenario SRES A2 being the most extreme.
Dimitrios Papoulis, Dimitra Kaika, Christina Bampatsou and Efthimios Zervas, 2015, Public Perception of Climate Change in a Period of Economic Crisis. Climate 2015, 3, 715-726 ; doi:10.3390/cli3030715
Abstract- The present study surveys the opinion of the residents of the Athens area in Greece on a wide range of issues related to climate change, such as their environmental consciousness and awareness and their willingness to take action against climate change. This study is performed at a time of a severe economic crisis in Greece. Based on a questionnaire, this study examines the general trends reported on various environmental issues, more particularly concerning climate change. The main results are that Greek citizens are aware of the problems of environmental and of climate change and also believe that the environmental quality of Greece is quite poor. They believe they are fairly well informed about climate change. However, the current economic crisis in Greece has reversed the progress made in the past concerning the awareness of climate change. Also, the citizens have very low confidence in the public authorities and the big enterprises to deal with climate change, while they have high level of trust in scientific and environmental organizations. They agree with public actions, but are against individual actions to protect the environment as they consider the main stakeholders (state, industry) to be mainly responsible for environmental degradation.
Panagiotis T. Nastos & Christos S. Zerefos, 2010, Climate Change and precipitation in Greece, Hellenic Journal of Geosciences, vol. 45, 185-192
Abstract- This paper is a review, concerning the observed climatic changes in the precipitation regime of Greece, during the period 1956-2002, based on daily precipitation totals from 26 meteorological stations, assigned by the Hellenic National Meteorological Service. The annual trends of the precipitation time series were estimated using the Mann-Kendall rank statistic method. Besides, the probability of the extreme events was determined by the scale and shape parameters of the fitted Gamma distribution to the daily precipitation time series.
The findings extracted by the analysis showed that, decreasing trends, mostly statistically significant at 95% confidence level, regarding the total annual precipitation and the annual number of rain days appear all over Greece. The fitted Gamma distributions to the precipitation datasets within 10-year sub periods indicate that the scale parameter increases for the western and southern-eastern sub regions, while the annual precipitation presents a downward trend, especially during the last decade 1991-2000. The increase in the variance and the scale parameter, as well as the shift of the mean towards higher values reveal the incidence of extreme daily precipitation values since 1980s.
