Climate and Lake Impacts in Europe (CLIME)

The central aim of CLIME was to develop a suite of methods and models that can be used to manage lakes and catchments under future as well as current climatic conditions. The most up-to-date regional climate scenarios, and existing catchment and lake models were used in CLIME to address issues that are central to the implementation of the Water Framework Directive. CLIME took advantage of automatic water quality monitoring systems already deployed on many of our target lakes. CLIME had a socio-economic component which paid particular attention to two water quality issues that are likely to become increasingly important:
1. Leaching of highly coloured water from peatland catchments.
2. Increased productivity of some lakes and the increasing frequency of algal blooms.
CLIME also had a decision support component which developed an integrated climate - catchment - lake - socio-economy tool with a graphical interface and uncertainty analysis capability. The development of this CLIME DSS tool continues. Also, in a related project with JRC, a method and a website for illustrating the impacts of climate change on physical characteristics of lakes in Europe was developed. The CLIME book is now available from Springer: The Impact of Climate Change on European Lakes, Series: Aquatic Ecology Series, Vol. 4 George, Glen (Ed.) 2010, XXVI, 507 p., Hardcover ISBN: 978-90-481-2944-7