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| Climate
Change — Adapting to The Impacts, by Communities in Northern
Peripheral Regions |
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Demonstration adaptation project : Planning for floods and climate change Location: The city of Rovaniemi and municipality of Kittilä, Finland
Climate change scenarios are needed for flood mapping and risk response planning. Currently, this kind of climate change and flood modelling is done only in the city of Pori and experiences and best practise from there are used also in Rovaniemi and Kittilä. The local adaptation strategy themes, for example tourism and flooding, in WP3 will be taken into account in this demonstration project. SYKE (Finnish Environment Institute) and AC (Arctic Centre) will calculate what effects there will be on the local flood risks as a result of local climate change effects. SYKE and AC will use climate change models and hydrological and weather history data and the results will be put into a hydraulic flow model. The resultant water levels will be calculated for the Rovaniemi city centre and in the municipality of Kittilä. Different flood maps will be produced for different scenarios, floods in every 20, 50, 100, 250 and 1000 years and how the climate change affects flood recurrence. Climate change scenarios will be ready in spring 2009 and hydraulic modelling will be undertaken in summer 2009. Flood maps will be produced in autumn 2009 and they will be used in risk response and land use planning. One possibility is to plan temporary or permanent structures to prevent floods in those areas which are at risk. Risk response planning will be done in spring 2010 and project will be completed in December 2010. The key adaptation outcome is to help land use planners to plan more effectively by better understanding how the climate change impacts can affect flooding and by then better identifying which areas are not suitable for building on account of the changed flood risk. The WSFS is a conceptual hydrological model, used for operational flood forecasting and for research purposes. The system is based on a watershed model, which is originally the HBV-model, and simulates the hydrological cycle using standard meteorological data. The model simulates the whole land area of Finland, including cross-boundary watersheds, a total of 390 000 km2. The inputs of the model are precipitation and temperature and the simulated components of hydrological cycle are snow accumulation and melt, soil moisture, evaporation, ground water, runoff and discharges and water levels of the main rivers and lakes. (Vehviläinen and Huttunen 2002) The hydrological scenarios about the changes in discharges are evaluated by simulating 30 years of daily discharges with the WSFS in the reference period and in the future time periods. In the reference period the input data are observed temperatures and precipitations. Climate change is taken into account by changing the precipitation and temperatures, which are based on observations, according to the chosen climate scenario. Climate scenarios give monthly changes in temperatures in degrees and changes in precipitations in percentages. Discharges and water levels are then simulated with the changed temperatures and precipitations as input and new discharges for the 30 year period are obtained. The time periods are usually: • Reference period 1971-2000 • 2010-2039 • 2040-2069 Floods cause significant economical damage. In the last years in Finland the average damage has been about 0.7 milj. euros, but in the year 2004 the damages were ten times as much. If a severe flood (1/250a) would occur, it could inflict a damage worth 550 milj. euros. Due to intensified land use, postglacial isostatic landuplift and because of climate change could the damages be even worse? |
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Project
coordinator: UHI
Millennium Institute, Perth College, Crieff Road, Perth,
Scotland (UK), PH1 2NX
Tel: (+)44 1738
877204 •
Fax: (+)44 1738 877018 • clive.bowman@perth.uhi.ac.uk |
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