KNMI updates Delta Commissioner on climate change
On Wednesday 2 October, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) brought the Delta Commissioner up to date on the IPPC’s new climate report and its significance for the Delta Programme.
Director-General Frits Brouwer and climate researchers Klein Tank and Wilco Hazeleger, who were involved in drawing up the IPCC report, explained that the earlier general picture of global warming and rising sea levels turns out to be sound, and can be confirmed with even more certainty by new insights and analyses. The calculation models are now increasingly better able to explain the unequal distribution of the impacts of global warming, based on, among other things, changes in the sun’s strength, volcanic eruptions, and the warming of oceans. In combination with new knowledge regarding the melting of the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, predictions about the future global rise in sea levels are now more reliable.
The KNMI is working hard to translate the IPCC’s new global analyses into the context of the Netherlands. In addition, regional differences (between the coast and inland areas and within urban areas) are being examined, as well as changes in extreme (daily) weather patterns, for example coincident storm surges and heavy rainfall. The KNMI will publish its report on this, containing the new KNMI climate scenarios, in May 2014.
The Delta Programme anticipates possible future developments in the climate
and socio-economic conditions. To this end, it uses scenarios to form the search
parameters for finding strategies for water safety and the freshwater supply. By
collaborating closely with the KNMI, the Delta Programme is already working with
the climate and sea level predictions set out in the IPCC report. The Delta
Commissioner concludes that the direction the Delta Programme is taking
therefore does not have to be altered. Moreover, the IPCC report underscores the
importance of the adaptive nature of the strategies that are being developed in
the Delta Programme. This enables us to respond to new knowledge and insights.
It also means that we need to have continued access to sound series of
measurements in order to identify trends and changes on time.
The visit once again illustrates that the KNMI is a very valuable partner in the
Delta Programme.