Climate: ENEA launches first climate service for Europe

The first pan-European climate service has been launched, which provides high-definition maps and real-time geophysical data with a particular focus on coastal areas most exposed to flood risk. The service has been developed as part of the European project CoCliCo (Coastal Climate Core Service), which includes ENEA.

“With sea levels expected to rise by at least 40 cm by 2100, this tool will allow us to develop scenarios for public authorities and managers of critical infrastructures (ports, road and rail networks), in order to design climate change adaptation strategies along with territorial planning to safeguard the population and essential services,” explained the Italian project coordinator Gianmaria Sannino, Head of the ENEA Division Modelling, Observations and Scenarios for Climate Change and Air Quality.

ENEA provides the climate service with flood maps caused by sea level rise for the entire Mediterranean and Black Sea regions. Drawn through an innovative Mediterranean-scale model for climate projections at very high resolution—up to 70 meters in the Straits of Gibraltar and the Dardanelles. “This tool can also simulate, as realistically as possible, the exchange of water and heat between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean, and between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, while effectively representing tides and their interaction with marine currents,” said Sannino.

The new climate service has been successfully tested in various European contexts, but to become fully operational it will require further technological development and financial resources, as highlighted in the latest  policy brief of the project, which presents policymakers with possible solutions and recommendations.

Among these is the integration of the CoCliCo climate service into the EU Copernicus programme and the Digital Twin of the Ocean project. “The latter project uses observational data, numerical models, and artificial intelligence technologies to better understand the impact of climate change on the seas, given that the oceans absorb about 90% of the excess heat generated by anthropogenic climate change,” continued Sannino.

“In the report, we deliver a clear message: coastal areas are under pressure due to climate change. To safeguard the integrity of the territory and ensure opportunities for economic growth and well-being, transformative adaptation strategies are needed—that is, profound and structural responses to the impacts of climate change. Unlike conventional adaptation, which focuses on incremental adjustments to reduce risks, transformative adaptation aims to radically rethink social, economic, and environmental systems to make them more resilient and sustainable in the long term. For example, in coastal areas affected by sea level rise, building dikes or barriers may not be enough: in some cases, the relocation of entire communities could become inevitable,” the ENEA researcher pointed out.

The document also emphasizes that “coastal areas require deep transformations” as they are nearing a “critical threshold” due to anthropogenic pressures (urbanization, tourism, and resource exploitation) and climate change,, with increasingly frequent flooding events. Without new measures, by 2050 over 1 million people could be exposed to extreme flood events (in 2010, the figure ranged between 600,000 and 1 million inhabitants).

“But solutions do exist, as shown by this advanced prototype of a climate service, which provides flood risk information to a wide range of users (European, national, and local authorities, as well as critical infrastructure managers) and could also offer customized services to meet the needs of individual territories,” concluded Sannino.