News Archive

The newest Climate-ADAPT search assistant upgrade brings several enhancements designed to mprove performance, reliability, and user experience. Key new features include DeepResearch capabilities enabling more comprehensive responses, Multi step Reasoning, and Fact Check AI, which offers greater stability and trustworthiness.

The Norwegian Environment Agency, together with the Directorate for Children, Youth and Family Affairs, has commissioned a comprehensive literature mapping on links between climate change and social inequality. The report, which will inform Norway’s forthcoming national climate vulnerability assessment, indicates that climate related events tend to deepen existing inequalities. The report is written in Norwegian, but includes an English summary and key findings.

This report compiles the results of the project “Municipal Survey: Where Do Municipalities Stand in Adapting to Climate Change and How Do They Arrive at Multifunctional and Transformative Adaptation Solutions?”, provides guidance on how to strengthen municipal adaptation in Germany, and identifies future research needs. The report is in German, but there is an extensive English summary.

The EEA Management Board formally endorsed the Republic of Moldova as a cooperating country of the EEA and Eionet. This reflects a closer cooperation between the EEA and the Republic of Moldova on environment protection, including adaptation to climate change. Climate-ADAPT will gradually build up covering the country in the Climate-ADAPT resources and services.

Two new policy briefs have been published in the EU-funded LAND4CLIMATE project, highlighting that scaling up nature-based solutions on private land requires building long-term trust with landowners, simplifying administrative and legal procedures, providing clear economic incentives, and strengthening local technical capacity to move from fragmented action to more systematic and effective implementation.

A new European Environment Agency (EEA) briefing shows that with targeted investment, stronger governance and better monitoring of climate risks and adaptation, Europe can move from reactive crisis management to proactive resilience — stabilising farm incomes and safeguarding longterm agricultural productivity.

The European Environment Agency is developing a new tool called the Navigator, which will contribute to the Integrated framework for European climate resilience and risk management prepared by the European Commission. Hosted on Climate-ADAPT, the Navigator will help users across the EU find and access climate adaptation tools more easily. Please take our short survey by 30 March 2026 to help us design a Navigator that meets your needs.

The Climate-ADAPT case study catalogue was enriched by a national whole-of-government wildfire governance case study from Portugal. It shows the making of the Portuguese Integrated Rural Fire Management System to protect people and assets while supporting rural development. It complements another national example from Sweden, reflecting on managing/preventing wildfires under climate change conditions in Northern Europe.

Through developing a case study on engineering interventions to secure continued operation of road transport in areas affected by increasing intense rainfall due to climate change, the Ministry of Climate and Environment, Republic of Poland helped to close a gap for inspiring examples of practical adaptation actions in the transport sector in the Climate-ADAPT case study catalogue.

By analyzing nine storms that hit the western Mediterranean in early 2026, an international team of researchers found that densely populated urban centres, particularly where tourism-driven development has expanded into floodplains, as well as low-lying, eroding coastal towns, have a significantly higher exposure to heavy rainfall events. The combination of advance warning and decisive response helped limit the impact on communities at risk.

Setúbal, a signatory of the Covenant of Mayors since 2014, has invested in structural flood prevention. A dual water retention basin system integrated into what appears to be an urban park has now passed its first real stress test under extreme rainfall conditions, proving its effectivity to significantly mitigate disaster risks.

A new report from the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change, 'Strengthening resilience to climate change – Recommendations for an effective EU adaptation policy framework', sets out how the EU can strengthen its approach to climate adaptation in the face of escalating and increasingly systemic climate risks.

The reference warming trajectory for climate adaptation (TRACC) is now enshrined in the Environment Code in France. A decree adopted on 23 January 2026 defines the objectives of the trajectory and the conditions for its updating. It is completed with an order specifying the warming levels of the trajectory and the procedures for making the corresponding regional climate projections available by the national Met agency, Météo-France.

Europeans are very concerned about extreme heat and other impacts of climate change like wildfires according to the results of a Europe-wide survey. It found that many citizens were also underprepared to deal with the increasing frequency and magnitude of heatwaves, flooding, or water shortages in their own homes. Ensuring the well-being and prosperity of European society under the rapidly changing climate requires a broad implementation of measures preventing and preparing for climate impacts, the affordability of household-level resilience measures and the fair distribution of authority-led adaptation actions

Four new policy briefs from the EU co-funded Ready4Heat project offer practical guidance for cities. The briefs translate local pilots from Austria, Slovenia, Hungary and Germany into clear recommendations for other municipalities.

Funded by the European Commission and coordinated by Slovakia’s Ministry of Environment, the Technical Support Instrument project delivered key findings to support the update of Slovakia’s National Climate Adaptation Strategy, along with related communication and capacity building activities. All deliverables are available in English on Slovakia’s climate adaptation web platform.

The Swedish Forestry Agency (Skovstyrelsen) published its second climate change adaptation plan for 2026-20230. This 5-year plan includes measures to increase surveillance and crisis management, ensure site adapted forests with reduced sensitivity for storm-felling and high level of variation, and to avoid increasing damage on the environment and other societal values over time. The report is in Swedish with an English summary.

The first European Climate Risk Assessment (EUCRA), published in 2024, is an important part of the evidence base for the integrated framework for European climate resilience and risk management. The EEA has now started work on the second edition (EUCRA-2), due for publication in 2028. EUCRA-2 will strengthen quantitative risk analysis, expand the policy scope, deepen adaptation insights, and increase stakeholder involvement, including from Eionet. A consortium has recently been contracted to support the delivery of EUCRA-2.

A new study commissioned by the Directorate-General for Climate Action (DG CLIMA) and funded under Horizon Europe concludes that the EU, its Member States, and the private sector need to invest about €70 billion per year until 2050 in climate adaptation, to reduce exposure to increasing climate hazards and improve resilience.

The EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change has launched a new Mission portal, providing a rich source of information and practical tools for regions, local authorities and communities to understand climate risks, develop adaptation strategies and implement innovative solutions.

Greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere as emissions rise and natural carbon sinks, such as forests, struggle to absorb CO2. Sea-surface temperatures reached unprecedented levels, fuelled by strong and warmer weather patterns and long-term ocean warming caused by climate change. Global and European temperatures in 2025 ranked as the third-highest on record, according to data from the new EU's 'Copernicus Global Climate Highlights' report.

This briefing outlines the long-term benefits of investing in climate resilience. It presents the costs of enhancing resilience in some of Europe’s most climate-vulnerable sectors and describes the benefits for EU’s economy and society. The briefing is part of an ongoing series of EEA products that explore the costs and benefits of climate adaptation.

As climate change becomes a major driver of migration, EU-funded researchers are listening to affected communities to help support fairer policies for those most at risk. These insights can support local authorities to design adaptation and migration policies.

The European Commission has released its latest EU Agricultural Outlook report, which presents the projections for EU agricultural markets until 2035. The report depicts a continued productivity growth by adapting to climate change and by acknowledging the expected change in availability and affordability of inputs.

The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) is urging to step up monitoring and evaluation of climate risks and vulnerabilities and to strengthen adaptation efforts in the EU. Amongst others, it calls on the Member States to set up national coordination structures on multi-level adaptation with clear criteria for the organisation and distribution of competences and responsibilities, warning that lack of clarity can lead to losses of human lives and damage to ecosystems.