Three additional years of funding to support adaptation to climate change in low mountain regions

The impacts of climate change vary greatly from region to region and from place to place due to different geographical conditions, economic and social vulnerabilities and resilience of the systems. This results in different adaptation needs and options as well as the need to offer suitable or flexible solutions to the actors involved in implementation. A requirement for this is tailor-made and easily accessible data and information. However, experience shows that only information, starting with data on climate change up to more complex tools for deriving adaptation measures and decision support systems, is necessary but far from sufficient to initiate the process of climate adaptation in practice.

KlimaKonform addresses these challenges as an inter- and transdisciplinary project. Under the leadership of the TUD Chair of Meteorology with Prof. Matthias Mauder, partners from various scientific disciplines are working together in a coordinated and integrative manner to support municipalities as comprehensively as possible in adaptation processes. In addition to the TU Dresden with a total of seven professorships, the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, the Leibniz Institute for Ecological and Regional Development e.V., the United Nations University and the environmental agencies of the Federal States of Saxony, Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt are also involved.

In the first project phase, the cooperation with the mainly small and medium-sized municipalities in the KlimaKonform model region made the problems associated with adapting to the increasing extreme weather events, such as heat, drought, heavy rain and flooding, very visible: dominance of financially and personnel weak municipalities, partly sceptical about climate change. The projections of the future climate also show the special characteristics of low mountain regions – increased uncertainties, local intensification of extremes. In funding phase 2, the knowledge and procedures gained in phase 1 are to be expanded, if possible, for the entire low mountain regions of the Federal tates of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia and, where necessary, methodologically consolidated. To do so, the know-how acquired in the Weiße Elster region and the good contacts with the municipalities are used to implement specific proposals for climate adaptation with the help of the climate information services and climate coaches developed. In three living labs in municipalities of different size and with different capacities, KlimaKonform will support the planning of adaptation measures, test the potential and practicability of the climate services and improve them together with local stakeholders.

Funding

© BMBF

The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research through the funding measure RegIKlim - Regional Information on Climate Action, Focus on Model Regions - for the period July 2023 to June 2026 (FKZ 01LR 2005A1).

Project website: https://klimakonform.uw.tu-dresden.de/

Contact

Prof. Dr. Matthias Mauder
Chair of Meteorology, Project Manager KlimaKonform
Technische Universität Dresden
Faculty of Environmental Sciences
Institute of Hydrology and Meteorology
Chair of Meteorology
Phone: +49 351 463-31340
E-mail:
Web: https://tu-dresden.de/meteorologie