Heat, heavy rain, drought

The Landesanstalt für Umwelt, Messungen und Naturschutz Baden-Württemberg (LUBW) or Baden-Württemberg State Institute for the Environment, Measurements and Nature Conservation has been documenting the effects of climate change in Baden-Württemberg for years. Extreme events such as heavy rain and hail are occurring more frequently. Heatwaves and lengthy dry periods are no longer rare. So communities and districts need to plan now how they are going to deal with the consequences of climate change. At the University of Freiburg’s Institute of Environmental Social Sciences and Geography, researchers on the ‘Lokale Kompetenzentwicklung für Klimawandelanpassung in kleinen und mittleren Kommunen und Landkreisen’ (LoKlim, Local capacity development for climate change adaptation in small and medium-sized municipalities and districts) project are developing individual strategies and recommendations on what communities can do to cope with climate change. Now, the project team at the Chairs of Physical Geography and Geography of Global Change have published a Lokales Klimaportal (Local Climate Portal) and a Wissensportal (Knowledge Portal) on the subject. Both websites include climate data and maps prepared in a generally understandable way and contain climate data and maps covering every community in Baden-Württemberg.

Climate fact sheets for every community

The Local Climate Portal is already available to anyone who is interested enabling them to see a climate fact sheet for each community, setting out eleven different climatic parameters in a clear and comprehensible way. For instance, each of the climate fact sheets gives the mean annual temperature and average number of days frost or nights when temperatures do not dip below 20 degrees centigrade in a Baden-Württemberg community, in each case showing the recent past (1971-2000), the recent future (2021-2050) and the distant future (2071-2100). Comparison with other communities in Baden-Württemberg is possible using an interactive map. In the Knowledge Portal readers will also find information on the effects of climate change and potential approaches and adaptations that can be made at a community level.

Potential adaptations and recommendations for action

The two portals and the climate fact sheets are an initial result from the project. The project team has compiled and visualized the effects of climate change in a vivid way. “Our next objective is to compile communities into clusters that are experiencing and have to expect similar effects of climate change because of similar socioeconomic and geographic characteristics,” says Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Glaser, Professor of Physical Geography. “Then we can develop potential adaptations and recommendations for action that are specific to localities for these clusters.” The climate data will be collated with socioeconomic data such as population density, the economic situation as well as agricultural and forestry usage. “This will mean that people can make a science-based and at the same time practical evaluation of the impact of climate change on each individual community and each district in Baden-Württemberg,” explains Glaser.

The LoKlim project started in 2020 and is funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) within the framework of Germany’s adaptation strategy. The towns of Böblingen, Bad Krozingen and Kehl and the districts of Böblingen, Lake Constance and Enzkreis are partners in the project. Seven other towns are also network partners in the project: Emmendingen, Freiburg, Lahr, Mannheim, Offenburg, Rastatt and Waiblingen.

Local Climate Portal

Knowledge Portal

Project website

Article in the University of Freiburg’s online magazine

Press Release from the University of Freiburg announcing the launch of LoKlim