Newsletter 17 from Coordination Unit for Research in Climate Change Adaptation, KFT

KFT and the Science-Policy Nexus

At the Danish adaptation portal: www.klimatilpasning.dk KFT has updated the pages regarding research. Here we will post news from mainly Danish projects (mainly in Danish) with focus on adaptation and climate change. Please keep us updated so that your latest research is communicated out to all the users of the portal.  

As part of reorganization after the latest election in Denmark, the overall tasks related to adaptation have moved to the Danish Nature Agency under the Danish Ministry of Environment. Read more here (in Danish).

KFT and international activities

KFT work closely with FI (Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation) to secure Denmark’s participation in the EUs Joint Programming Initiative (JPI Climate). EUs Council has just launched JPI-Climate (www.JPI-Climate.eu), as one out of 5 new JPIs. JPI Climate aims at developing a joint EU research agenda. Consequently, four working groups have been established and started their work. Denmark has representatives in each of the four working groups. Denmark is represented in the Governing Board by Lene Cividanes (lecd@fi.dk) from FI (Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation) and Henning Høgh Jensen (hhj@dmu.dk) from KFT.

The four working groups focus right now on harvesting low hanging fruits in so-called fast track activities, which are under definition and description. Further, there has been a call for a CSA (Coordination and Support Action) and JPI Climate has established a group to address this call. More information will follow when the CSA takes form.

News about projects/funding

A two year Nordic project has been finalized:
CARAVAN: Climate change: a regional assessment of vulnerability and adaptive capacity for the Nordic countries. Funded by CIRCLE ERA-Net, Academy of Finland, Research Council of Norway and Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and with partners from Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), University of Oslo (Norway), University of Linköping (Sweden). The main aim of CARAVAN was to undertake a comparison of approaches for estimating regional vulnerability to climate change in the Nordic region. One of the outputs of the project is an online mapping tool that can be used to explore different aspects of vulnerability to climate change in the Nordic region.

Part of the work is continued in the Finnish project:
MAVERIC: Map-based assessment of vulnerability to climate change employing regional indicators. Funded by Academy of Finland and with partners from several Finnish institutions. The central aim of this project is to map quantitative measures of vulnerability to climate change at municipality scale across Finland.

Upcoming events

CLIWAT final conference. The final conference for the CLIWAT project, an Interreg IVB funded research project, will take place on January 5, 2012 at the Aarhus University, Denmark.

The project partners will present key results from the project research and by splitting the conference in two sessions it ensures that non technical and technical participants will benefit from the conference. The conference is free and open for all, but requires registration.

Climate Change Adaptation in Practice, 3rd International BaltCICA Conference takes place 18-19 January 2012, in Helsinki, Finland. The conference sets the spotlight on applied climate change adaptation. The Baltic Sea Region is expected to face changes in precipitation and flood patterns as well as rising sea levels. As coastal urban areas continue to grow, tourism is an important and growing economical factor, and nature and natural resources are to be protected, this leads to new challenges: How to safeguard drinking water availability and quality? How to manage riverine and coastal floods? How to design new urban areas and how to retrofit existing ones? Register before 17th December 2011.

6th International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software (iEMSs 2012): “Managing Resources of a Limited Planet: Pathways and Visions under Uncertainty”. July 1 – 5, 2012 in Leipzig, Germany. Managing Resources of a Limited Planet requires the adaptation to changing biophysical environments as one o the key aspects. Many studies have already demonstrated that we changed large fractions of the terrestrial surface. While the processes associated with these transformations are mostly well known, it is still a major challenge to simulate them quantitatively – a prerequisite to adequately assess environmental as well as related socio-economic impacts of ongoing or future human activities and/or climate change.

Second Nordic International Conference on Climate Change Adaptation. Adaptation Research meets Adaptation Decision-Making, Helsinki, Finland, 29-31 August 2012.

The Conference seeks to identify common ground between adaptation research and adaptation decision-making by comparing experiences, reporting new insights and revealing key gaps in knowledge.

Links to relevant documents

Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation: A Special Report of Working Group I and Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The first part (summary for policymakers) is available now. The full report will be available February 2012.

London’s climate change adaptation strategy - ‘Managing risks and increasing resilience’ - has been published. It describes the actions needed to help manage extreme weather today and the impacts of longer-term climate change in the future. A key focus is ensuring that buildings are comfortable, affordable and sustainable, as is increasing the availability of green spaces for cooling and for managing wet weather. 

Download the documents here and find more general information here.

UKCIP based at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, provides every month new summaries of recent research relevant to climate change impacts and adaptation – see the so-called Climate Digest here.

The KFT Secretariat wishes you all a Marry Christmas and a Happy New year,

kft@dmu.dk
http://kft.au.dk/
www.climateprojects.dk

KFT is established under the government’s strategy for adaptation to climate change in Denmark. Participating institutions: Aarhus University (AU), Technical University of Denmark (DTU), University of Copenhagen (KU), Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS).

KFT Newsletters – a Platform for Researchers
Recipients of KFT newsletters are invited to contribute to the newsletter concerning climate, climate impact and climate change adaptation research. News of interest includes information on calls, networks, launched projects, events, etc.

Contributions can be submitted to kft@dmu.dk and will be considered by KFT against the criteria of theme and general interest. Please add sender information to allow KFT to collect further information.

If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please send an email to kft@dmu.dk.

KFT is responsible for the Danish Database on Climate Research Projects. The database is an important tool to support the coordination of accumulated research knowledge in Denmark and is also a platform for disseminating new findings on climate research. The information here is valuable both in a national and international context and it is promoted through KFT’s international network. It is, however, important that the database is updated continuously and we encourage you all to add the new relevant projects you have. This can be done electronically (via add new project) and will only take a few minutes.