Climate Change and European Cities

• Published in: European Journal of Climate Change
• Main Author: Susca, Tiziana
• Other Authors: ENEA Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, Via Anguillarese, 301, 00123 S. Maria di Galeria, Rome, Italy
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2020
• Subjects: [SDU.STU]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences; [SDU.STU.CL]Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth Sciences/Climatology; [SDE]Environmental Sciences; [SDE.MCG]Environmental Sciences/Global Changes; Ice cap
• Online Access: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02505075; https://doi.org/10.34154/2020-ejcc-0201-01-02/euraass

International audience The year 1950 has been a tipping point for Europe, as most of the European population became more urban than rural. Since that moment such a transition never stopped, and, projections say that by 2050, the number of urban inhabitants will approximately reach 75% of the total population in Europe, likely imposing further urban sprawl in one of the already most urbanized regions worldwide. As cities are responsible for 75% of the global carbon dioxide emissions, a question about how cities are dealing with climate change raises.Climate change threatens cities in numerous ways and at different scales. For instance, urbanization entails local increase in urban temperature, compared to the rural environs, known as Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Both big and small-sized European cities are experiencing UHI. Previous research shows that in Paris, Rome and Barcelona, the UHI is as high as 8, 5 and 8.2 °C, respectively.In addition to urban and microscale temperature surges, anthropogenic climate change has amplified the intensity and frequency of mesoscale warming phenomena: heat waves. Particularly relevant have been the heat waves recorded in 2003, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2014, 2015 and 2017. In Europe, from June to August 2003, the heat wave caused about 35000 deaths. In 2018, persistent high temperature anomalies were recorded in Europe, and in particular in Scandinavia and Northern Europe. Most important, estimates show that mesoscale warming phenomena will become more frequent in the coming years.On top of these warming phenomena, global land-ocean temperatures are continuing increasing in the last decades. In 2017 the global surface temperature resulted being 0.9 °C higher than the average global surface temperature relative to 1951-1980. The increase in global temperature entails the ice cap melting which causes sea level rise. At present, globally, sea level is 89.7 mm (±0.80 mm) higher than in 1993. In particular, in Europe, both northern European countries and Mediterranean ones, have ...