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Beniston: Climatic change and its impacts on the Alpine region
Submitted by share-everest on Wed, 04/30/2008 - 15:25.
The Alps are one of the principal sources of water for many European rivers, notably the Rhine, the Rhone, and tributaries of the Po and the Danube; in this respect, the Alps have often been referred to as the ‘water tower of Europe’.
They are regions that feature high biodiversity; and they are also a locale where there are concurrent and often competing interests between environmental and economic concerns.
The European Alps already today exhibit strong warming trends, well above the global average warming recorded in the course of the 20th century. As climate warms even further in coming decades, the Alpine environment will experience significant impacts that will have major repercussions for socio-economic activities in this highly populated and industrialized mountain region of the world.
The paper will make a brief survey of regional climate model results applied to the Alps, and what future climate may look like by 2100 under the IPCC A-2 high greenhouse-gas emissions scenario. The consequences of strong warming and seasonal shifts in precipitation will be assessed in terms of mountain ecosystems, cryosphere, and hydrology. Any changes in climate that impact water resources in the Alps will thus have significant impacts on the use and management of water, not only within the boundaries of the mountains themselves, but also in the populated lowlands downstream. Finally, an estimation of shifts in extreme events and their possible additional impacts will be addressed.