Projection of selected climate-related risks in the Czech Republic

Impact of climate-related events and their associated risks are important not only for policy makers, they have become a relevant part of important economic analyses.

This topic has been addressed by the project “Prediction, Evaluation and Research for Understanding National sensitivity and impacts of drought and climate change for Czechia“  where we estimated risks of hydrometeorological phenomena and their expected changes during the 21st century.

According to the results of our study, the main risks for the Czech Republic are related to the following phenomena: heat wave, cold wave, extreme wind, extreme precipitation (torrential and permanent), drought and the subsequent risks e.g. firerisk, severe thunderstorm.

To quantify changes in occurrence of heat waves from 1961 till 2020 and their future projection, a set of characteristics has been used: The number of days with maximum temperature above 34 °C, the number of days with minimum temperature above 20 °C and for the heat waves (heat wave defined as a period of at least three consecutive days with maximum daily temperature at least 30 °C) their frequency, duration and intensity .

Whilst statistically significant linear trend for number of days with extreme high temperature has been observed in the period 1961–2020 and the same time the heat waves frequency as well as duration prolonged, the results for occurrence of extreme precipitation and extreme wind were not conclusive.

In our analyses of the future development of the phenomena of our interest we used the data of regional climate model ALADIN-Climate CZ. The results based on ALADIN-Climate CZ data were compared to the results of the selected Euro-Cordex models.