Assessment of Climate change in Ports of Southwest Europe (ECCLIPSE)

Nowadays, European Ports are experiencing air and water temperature increases, rising sea levels, and changes in seasonal precipitation, wind and wave conditions. Many are also seeing more frequent and severe extreme events such as storms, heatwaves and droughts.

Climate change represents a significant risk to business, operations, safety and infrastructure – and hence to local, national and global economies. To ensure port operations in these changing conditions, a deeper understanding of the impacts of climate change at the local level is needed to explore appropriate adaptation strategies.

ECCLIPSE focuses on analyzing the impact of climate change on seaports, developing prevention and action strategies that can minimize its effects.

The objective of ECCLIPSE is to develop a common framework for assessing the impacts associated with climate change and the adaptation to such impacts of ports in the SUDOE space. The main project results include:

• The development and implementation of a common methodology to assure results consistency among different ports
• The mechanisms for designing and implementing the measures to adapt ports to climate change. These measures will have a common scientific basis for the whole European port network.
• The development of a climate database by port, which will allow the study of the evolution of climate change impact in specific locations when planning and designing new port infrastructures

The project includes 3 case studies in 3 different climate areas: Port of Valencia (Spain, Mediterranean), Port of Aveiro (Portugal, Atlantic) and Port of Burdeaux (France, Gulf of Gascogne).