Climate change information, monitoring and management tools for adaptation strategies in Adriatic coastal areas

The Mediterranean Sea and specifically the Adriatic coastal and marine areas are particularly vulnerable to climate-related risks. The sea surface temperature of the Adriatic Sea will increase of about +.
1.5/1.6°C in 2050 and sea level will increase of +7 cm with consequent negative impacts on coastal areas and marine ecosystem services. In Italy and Croatia climate monitoring, modelling and adaptation are necessary to face this crucial climate challenge and to turn potential threats into economic opportunities. AdriaClim will develop accurate information able to support the development of regional and local climate change adaptation plans. In particular coastal adaptation planning, for a sustainable blue economy, will be developed based on reliable and accurate information on local sea level rise, sea temperature and salinity, coastal erosion, etc. AdriaClim will contribute to fill the gaps (lack of geographical coverage) in existing observing systems and will enhance and complement the existing modelling capacity (e.g. Med-CORDEX) by developing high resolution integrated modelsAdriaClim will improve the knowledge on climate change and it will achieve the following results: improve and harmonize the access to observing and modelling tools and products (data platform, distributed database, innovative access tools) by setting up cross-border methodologies/protocols; set up new and improve existing regional and coastal high-resolution integrated meteo-hydro-ocean and ecological climate monitoring systems (observations and models). 7 integrated monitoring systems each focusing of different variables will be put in place dealing with different typologies of data: sea level, temperature, salinity, sediment, carbon, nutrients, ecosystem variables, atmospheric and ocean variables; assess the impacts, vulnerability and risks and develop maps and indexes for pilot case studies on the blue economy (aquaculture, tourism); marine ecosystems services by Marine Protected Areas (MPA); coastal towns (population), and ports; design adaptation plans (at least 3 in IT and 2 in HR) at different scale (e.g. local and regional) to be adopted by the relevant authorities in coastal territories; organize workshops to present future climate conditions and impacts; organize trainings for public and private stakeholders on adaptation measures, governance systems, monitoring of the actions, for the creation of new jobs in the field of adaptation and mitigation; set up a Transnational Expert Management Body (TEMB)AdriaClim will increase the capacity of climate change monitoring and of developing advanced climate adaptation planning increasing the level of resilience of the whole Adriatic Sea coastal areas. It will therefore increase the population benefiting from adaptation and mitigation actions planning. The tangible outputs such as the monitoring systems will last after the project end since they are all based on present and future capacities and operational systems maintained by environmental protection agencies and national institutes. Moreover, the adaptation planning capacities will be developed with local, regional, and national authorities that will validate them and will have the interest in maintaining them also after the project end