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As local risk assessments are fundamental for risk management and mitigation strategies, this work introduces a methodology for assessing multi-hazard scenarios of extreme compounded events and their duration using daily time series of surface variables from high-resolution climate simulations during historical and future periods under RCP8.5. The aim was to investigate the return level extremes of 20- and 50-year periods of hazards occurring within specific durations and concurrent extreme values of other surface variables, for selected locations in Greece. In addition, future changes in the temporal occurrence of compounded hazards involving precipitation and wind with temperature extremes were performed based on temperature extreme percentiles. The assessment revealed the geographical dependence in the projected occurrence, intensity, and duration of compounded multi-hazard extremes, emphasising the need for high spatial resolution climate data for their investigation. The highlights of the findings include a significant increasing trend of compounded multi-hazard extremes, e.g., hot days and tropical nights, milder winter minimum temperatures with lower rainfall extremes, hotter and windier events of shorter duration, and longer precipitation extremes with increased extreme temperatures. The projections showcased the impact of climate change on extreme compounds with a multitude of interesting findings associated with significant changes in their duration, intensity, and temporal occurrence.

The decay of porous materials in archaeological and built heritage is often accelerated by compound climate events, such as frost, salt crystallization, and prolonged rainfall. These processes threaten the definition of architectural surfaces, structural integrity and thus the heritage values of monuments built with porous inorganic materials. This study investigates the spatial and temporal distribution of these decay-inducing events across Greece, utilizing observational data and the Ensemble of five high-resolution climate simulations from EURO-CORDEX and EC-EARTH models. Focusing on the historical period (1980–2004) and future projections (2025–2049) under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios and using a set of heritage climatology indicators, this work reveals regional vulnerabilities and highlights the impacts of climate change on the frequency of such events. The study revealed high vulnerability on most mountainous regions and most of Northern and Western Greece for the sum of annual events, exhibiting future reduction. Salt transitions yield no significant changes, while events of prolonged rainfall and frost show a declining trend. By mapping the pace of decay-inducing events across the Greek territory, this research makes a solid first step to assessing risk-prone areas, hence offering a layer new knowledge for better-informed, and more localized heritage preservation strategies.

Fire occurrence and behaviour in Mediterranean-type ecosystems strongly depend on the air temperature and wind conditions, the amount of fuel load and the drought conditions that drastically increase flammability, particularly during the summer period. In order to study the fire danger due to climate change for these ecosystems, the meteorologically based Fire Weather Index (FWI) can be used. The Fire Weather Index (FWI) system, which is part of the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS), has been validated and recognized worldwide as one of the most trusted and important indicators for meteorological fire danger mapping. A number of FWI system components (Fire Weather Index, Drought Code, Initial Spread Index and Fire Severity Rating) were estimated and analysed in the current study for the Mediterranean area of France. Daily raster-based data-sets for the fire seasons (1st May–31st October) of a historic and a future time period were created for the study area based on representative concentration pathway (RCP) 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios, outputs of CNRM-SMHI and MPI-SMHI climate models. GIS spatial analyses were applied on the series of the derived daily raster maps in order to provide a number of output maps for the study area. The results portray various levels of changes in fire danger, in the near future, according to the examined indices. Number of days with high and very high FWI values were found to be doubled compared to the historical period, in particular in areas of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA) region and Corsica. The areas with high Initial Spread Index and Seasonal Spread Index values increased as well, forming compact zones of high fire danger in the southern part of the study area, while the Drought Code index did not show remarkable changes. The current study on the evolution of spatial and temporal distribution of forest fire danger due to climate change can provide important knowledge to the decision support process for prevention and management policies of forest fires both at a national and EU level.

Mitigating climate change impacts and enhancing the resilience capacity of military infrastructure is essential for the Armed Forces, first, to ensure a high level of both readiness and sustainability transitions and, second, to contribute to each EU Member-State’s (MS) specific energy and climate goals. According to this study’s bibliographical research, there are not in place systematic methodological approaches that assess in quantitative terms existing resilience factors of military infrastructure against climate change impacts and offer tangible solutions, which aim to enhance these resilience factors. From all military assets, those of the airports deem to be the most vulnerable, due to their high exposure to extreme weather phenomena. This study is targeting to cover this identified gap by conducting an analytical methodology in very practical terms, following a similar concept and structure with the methods applied to civilian airport facilities, whist, at the same time taking into consideration the defence airport specificities, in terms of structure and operation. This methodological approach is test-based on the 116Combat Wing, located at Araxos’ Airport, Achaia. Results indicate the climatic hazard that demands immediate action and provide a tool that estimates dedicated cost allocations.

South European and Mediterranean countries traditionally suffer from water scarcity, especially the regions around the Mediterranean. In Cyclades, the effects of drought have historically been observed and tackled with small-scale applications, with the most efficient method being rainwater harvesting (RWH). RWH is an inherent aspect of the local population’s culture and architecture, since most houses have built-in water tanks and flat roofs to harvest as much rainwater as possible. In recent decades, the increase in local population and tourism have added additional stress to the limited water resources of the Cycladic islands. To overcome water shortages, most of the islands are equipped with desalination plants. Despite the use of these plants, RWH is still a vital source of water that is free and has zero carbon footprint. Thus, it is important to compare, assess and quantify the performance of this traditional water conserving method as a key water source for the islands’ water resources management, today and for the coming decades. In this research, we investigate and quantify the future performance of rainwater harvesting applications and their contribution to continuous, sustainable, and climate-resilient water supply. The results show a decrease in rainwater harvesting potential in most of the islands, as well as the negative effect of touristic activity on per capita water availability on the islands.

In the context of climate change and growing energy demand, solar technologies are considered promising solutions to mitigate Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and support sustainable adaptation. In Greece, solar power is the second major renewable energy, constituting an increasingly important component of the future low-carbon energy portfolio. In this work, we propose the use of a high-resolution regional climate model (Weather Research and Forecasting model, WRF) to generate a solar climate atlas for the near-term climatological future under the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCPs) 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios. The model is set up with a 5 × 5 km2 spatial resolution, forced by the ERA-INTERIM for the historic (1980–2004) period and by the EC-EARTH General Circulation Models (GCM) for the future (2020–2044). Results reaffirm the high quality of solar energy potential in Greece and highlight the ability of the WRF model to produce a highly reliable future climate solar atlas. Projected changes between the annual historic and future RCPs scenarios indicate changes of the annual Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) in the range of ±5.0%. Seasonal analysis of the GHI values indicates percentage changes in the range of ±12% for both scenarios, with winter exhibiting the highest seasonal increases in the order of 10%, and autumn the largest decreases. Clear-sky fraction fclear projects increases in the range of ±4.0% in eastern and north continental Greece in the future, while most of the Greek marine areas might expect above 220 clear-sky days per year.

In the framework of planning and designing resilient housing under a changing climate, the present study constitutes a comprehensive literature review exploring climate-proofing solutions for the built environment concerning energy supply and water availability. This study delved into a multitude of sources that included scientific papers and reports and European Union guidelines and tools. The identified solutions covered building, urban, and territorial scales. The hazards of interest included heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, earthquakes, wildfires, and storms. Several types of solutions were found (e.g., nature-based, education/capacity-building, engineering/built environment, etc.) with different times of application and timescales of action (e.g., defensive measures, short-term solutions, long-term adaptive, etc.). The maturity of the identified solutions was assessed based on the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) and Societal Readiness Level (SRL). Moreover, each solution’s contribution to climate mitigation was investigated. The solutions were assessed in terms of self-sustainability and other key criteria, namely, effectiveness, contribution to resilience maturity and climate change mitigation, adaptive nature, financing access, risk reduction, and social cohesion. In total, 85 energy and water solutions were determined from the desk review analysis and 67 (30 for the energy sector and 37 for the water sector) solutions were finally retained and proposed.

This paper introduces a climatic multi-hazard risk assessment for Greece, as the first-ever attempt to enhance scientific knowledge for the identification and definition of hazards, a critical element of risk-informed decision making. Building on an extensively validated climate database with a very high spatial resolution (5 × 5 km2), a detailed assessment of key climatic hazards is performed that allows for: (a) the analysis of hazard dynamics and their evolution due to climate change and (b) direct comparisons and spatial prioritization across Greece. The high geographical complexity of Greece requires that a large number of diverse hazards (heatwaves—TX, cold spells—TN, torrential rainfall—RR, snowstorms, and windstorms), need to be considered in order to correctly capture the country’s susceptibility to climate extremes. The current key findings include the dominance of cold-temperature extremes in mountainous regions and warm extremes over the coasts and plains. Extreme rainfall has been observed in the eastern mainland coasts and windstorms over Crete and the Aegean and Ionian Seas. Projections of the near future reveal more warm extremes in northern areas becoming more dominant all over the country by the end of the century.

Future changes in drought characteristics in Greece were investigated using dynamically downscaled high-resolution simulations of 5 km. The Weather Research and Forecasting model simulations were driven by EC-EARTH output for historical and future periods, under Representative Concentration Pathways 4.5 and 8.5. For the drought analysis, the standardized precipitation index (SPI) and the standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index (SPEI) were calculated. This work contributed to achieve an improved characterization of the expected high-resolution changes of drought in Greece. Overall, the results indicate that Greece will face severe drought conditions in the upcoming years, particularly under RCP8.5, up to 8/5 y of severity change signal. The results of 6-month timescale indices suggest that more severe and prolonged drought events are expected with an increase of 4 months/5 y, particularly in areas of central and eastern part of the country in near future, and areas of the western parts in far future. The indices obtained in a 12-month timescale for the period 2075–2099 and under RCP8.5 have shown an increase in the mean duration of drought events along the entire country. Drought conditions will be more severe in lowland areas of agricultural interest (e.g., Thessaly and Crete).

Dam and reservoir (D&R) systems, during their long history, have suffered from hundreds of failures, whose mechanisms have been accelerated by climate change and climate hazards. The following research question is posed: “which are the potentially significant climate hazards of D&R systems?” To answer this question, the vulnerability of D&R systems to climate change is assessed via a typologized methodology that is consistent with the technical guidelines of the European Commission on the climate proofing of infrastructure. The main steps of the methodology, which are (1) a description of the D&R system, (2) climate change assessment, and (3) vulnerability assessment, are performed using literature surveys, expert opinions, and climate models. The methodology is applied to the Almopeos D&R system in Greece, which is in the design stage, and the following conclusions are drawn: (1) the potentially significant groups of climate hazards are (i) temperature increase and extreme heat, (ii) precipitation decrease, aridity, and droughts, and (iii) extreme precipitation and flooding, and (2) the vulnerability assessment identified the climate indicators, the most important effects, and the most vulnerable components of the D&R system that can be used in the risk assessment that follows to identify the significant climate hazards and to propose targeted adaptation strategies to reduce their risks to an acceptable level.