RESCCUE (RESilience to cope with Climate Change in Urban arEas) EU Project - WP1 Data

These files contain the data generated for the Work Package 1 of the RESCCUE project. RESCCUE project was devised to analyse future urban impacts due to climate change so as to improve resilience of three target cities: Barcelona, Bristol and Lisbon. To achieve that, future climate projections and changes in extreme events were obtained at a local scale for the Work Package 1. Several past studies were analysed to identify all the climate variables and extreme events that could affect urban areas, e.g. heavy rainfall, heat waves and storm surge. All available meteorological observations in the considered areas were collected and filtered through several tests (general consistency, outliers and inhomogeneities) in order to handle datasets long enough and of good quality. As a way to obtain the best input possible, every valid station was extended in time by downscaling process with the ERA-Interim reanalysis.

Future climate projections were obtained for ten different global climate models considering two of the main Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) established in the last IPCC report. These models were downscaled through a sophisticated statistical methods (analogous stratification and transfer functions among others) to project local climate according to the identified climate drivers: temperature, precipitation, wind, relative humidity, sea level pressure, potential evapotranspiration, snowfall, wave height and sea level; and for both climate and decadal timescales. Already downscaled models were first validated for the method and afterwards verified, obtaining small errors and good coherent simulations.

Extreme events of the main climate drivers were obtained and analysed for both historical and future scenarios through the combination of several statistical methods as well as through the analysis of several teleconnectionpatterns. Derived events such as heat waves, drought, snowstorms, storm surges, wave height among others were afterwards inferred for climate, decadal and seasonal scale.

FILES

The data generated have been grouped into three different files, one for each studied area: the hydrological basin of the rivers Ter and Llobregat (the area that influences Barcelona), the geographical area between England and South Wales (the area that influences Bristol) and the Lisbon area.

Each of the files contains a self-explanatory file detailing the structure of the information contained and the way in which it is provided.

ABOUT THE RESCCUE PROJECT

The RESCCUE project, Resilience to cope with Climate Change in Urban Areas, –a multisectorial approach focusing on water– aims to provide practical and innovative models and tools to end-users facing climate change challenges to build more resilient cities.

The project provides tools to assess urban resilience from a multisectorial approach, for current and future climate scenarios and including multiple hazards. This holistic approach to urban resilience will enable city managers and urban systems operators to decide the optimal investments to cope with future situations.

For more information, please visit www.resccue.eu