Heat is on for Czechs says the climate survey
The Czech Republic recently experienced an intense heatwave, with temperatures hitting 38 degrees Celsius in places. Although the weather has now cooled down a little, the latest study on climate change carried out by experts from Charles University suggests that Czechs will have to brace for similar heatwaves more frequently in the future.
“The study is part of a larger project that we do together with Šance pro budovy, which is a professional alliance of industries involved in the building sector. The final outcome of the whole project should be a strategy on how to adapt our buildings in the Czech Republic to climate change.
“So the study is part of a larger project telling us what are the likely impacts that we will have to face in the future, in relation to the building sector. We spend most of our time, about ninety percent, inside the buildings. That's why we focus on the issue of how to make buildings comfortable for people when climate change brings draughts or extreme heat waves.
According to the study, the temperature is likely to rise by 1.5 Degrees Celsius by 2040 and by 2.5 degrees by 2060. How did the researchers arrive at this conclusion?
“We used the existing data on human emissions that were used for the assessment reports of the intergovernmental panel of climate change. The intergovernmental panel is a global body that produces, every five or seven years, a comprehensive study about climate change and deals with the impacts of climate change.
“And all these scenarios are based on the models predicting how the emissions will develop in the future. We took two scenarios from the whole report, one more optimistic, assuming that the emissions will stabilise, and the other rather pessimistic, assuming that emissions will continue to rise in the future.
“Events like the heatwave that we are experiencing at the moment are more likely to occur in the future.”
“We also asked for a reference scenario for the past period to cross-check whether the results of the models correspond with what we have already measured and experienced. So it is a product of regional downscaling from global models using the most recent existing scenarios.”
Will the temperature rise be even or are we to expect more extreme weather conditions, such as the heat waves that we have experienced in the past weeks? Is it something that will happen more frequently in the future?
“Our study assesses the likely changes. We expect that the temperature rise will not be even throughout the year. So events like the heatwave that we are experiencing at the moment are more likely to occur in the future.
“We also assessed for instance the number of tropical days we can expect in the future, which is about eight to twelve more than we have now. And obviously the more distant future the more worrisome the results are with regards to the impacts like draughts, heatwaves and so on.”
What impact will the rise in temperatures have on our country?
“For a country like the Czech Republic we have couple of options on the table as how to deal with such problems. As we can see in the studies that were done in other countries that are more prone to heatwaves, such as Australia, there will be several different types of impacts. One of them is the impact on the working hours without proper conditions inside the buildings.
“The heatwaves in Australia are said to have decreased economic output by approximately six billion US dollars. So this can be the cost of working hours lost to the heatwave. That's why want to focus on the buildings and adapt them to such conditions.
“The other likely impacts are for the healthcare system. There are studies by WHO suggesting that climate change will be one of the most serious problems to tackle in the future. We could see with the recent heatwaves hitting Pakistan and India bringing death tolls to several hundred people. For instance people with asthma and other respiratory diseases will suffer more, as well as children and the elderly.”
“This will be part of our next study. We will be looking at several examples in the Czech Republic and hopefully produce a practical tool on how to go around this problem and how to prepare a strategy for different types of cities.
“Larger cities also struggle with an effect called ‘urban heat island’. It means that the temperature in the centre of the city remains very high even during the night while the outside temperatures are by several degrees lower. So we also have to calculate with this effect.
“In terms of measures that we are looking into it is better thermal insulation of the buildings. Better insulation and better windows are good for a start, but the measures should be more complex, such as installing outside shades or blades protecting the buildings from sun rays. And as you mentioned, we should have more greenery in the cities, such as more trees and green roofs.
“Another way of cooling the inner part of the city is the treatment of water from precipitation: allowing the water to stay in the town instead of letting it go into the sewage system. And we should also think about the choice of materials that we use in constructing, because some of them are reflecting the sunlight. So this is another practical example of how to adjust the building laws to take climate change into consideration.”
On days like these, in a modern administrative building like this one, the air-conditioning keeps running throughout the whole day. I guess if all buildings had air-conditioning, the financial impact would be huge.
“Another way of cooling the inner part of the city is allowing water from precipitation to stay in the town instead of letting it go into the sewage system.”
“That's a very good comment, actually. With air-conditioning, obviously, it might be necessary in some of the buildings, but we would hope that it would be just a smaller number of buildings. Because majority of them could be really adjusted by other measures than air-conditioning to make life easier and sustained.
“The air-conditioning doesn’t only have economic impacts on the house owner or the tenant but it also creates more emissions because of the electricity that is needed. The more air-conditioning, the more emissions, the more severe the impacts of climate change, this is a very simple equation.
“Air-conditioning is really a thing that we would like to avoid as much as possible. We have many other options on the table that are more economic and also more climate-friendly.
Will you be looking at other European countries for inspiration on how to deal with climate change?
“Yes, because the project is funded by several Nordic countries and these countries are in many ways ahead of this part of Europe. One of their advantages is that they already count with climate change in strategic planning both on the country and on the local level.
“Every village, every town and every part of a larger city must have its adaptation strategy. Obviously the impact on Scandinavia in terms of climate change will differ from the impacts that we will face here, but there are some very practical examples that we can look into.
“We are looking into ways of adjusting the building laws, co that climate change would be one of the conditions that need to be met when building a new house. This is compulsory in countries like Norway and every builder or investor must consider climate change and adapt the building accordingly.
You said you were looking into two different scenarios, one being more optimistic and the other one more pessimistic. Does that mean we can still, at least to some extent, reverse the trend of rising temperatures?
„Obviously we still have solutions at our hands. If climate change remains uncontrolled, the impacts would be much more severe. But most of the changes that we are already experiencing are unavoidable. The optimistic scenario means that the emissions will stabilise, but it requires lot of effort by the local community to tackle the greenhouse gases.
“But some solutions are already at our hand and we spoke about many of them. We hope that the very practical proposal that we want to come up with will serve as an example how to enable more households to get ready.”
