Climate-related hazard indices for Europe

This technical paper describes the review and selection process for a compact set of 32 climate-related hazard indices for Europe. These activities were carried out by experts from the European Topic Centre on Climate Change Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation (ETC/CCA) in support of the development of a European Environment Agency (EEA) Report on climate-related hazards in Europe to be published in 2021.

The information provided by the final hazard index set has the following objectives:

• to provide a European overview on past trends and projected changes in key representative climate-related hazards with adaptation relevance for different sectors and policy themes,
• to support the development and application of national and regional indices for climate-related hazards with adaptation relevance.

The final index set covers several climate-related hazards that are relevant for large parts of Europe, considering both acute events (e.g. heatwaves, heavy rain) and slow-onset hazards (e.g. sea level rise, changes in mean temperature and precipitation). Chapter 2 describes the framework, sources and process that led to the selection of the final index set. Chapter 3 presents the general findings on index definition and data availability deriving from the discussion within the team and the external experts. Chapter 4 presents the specific results on single climate-related hazards and indices from the discussion with the team and external experts. Chapter 5 presents index factsheets for all selected indices, which include data recommendations for their operationalization.