Assessment of regional climate change impacts on Hungarian landscapes

The assessment of regional climate change impacts combined with the sensitivity of landscape functions by predictive modelling of hazardous landscape processes is a new fundamental field of research. In particular, this study investigates the effects of changing weather extremes on meso-regional-scale landscape vulnerability. Climatic-exposure parameter analysis was performed on a predicted climate change scenario. The exposure to climate change was analysed on the basis of the original data of the meso-scale IPCC A1B climate scenario from the REMO and ALADIN regional models for the periods of 2021-2050 and 2071-2100, and the regional types of climate change impacts were calculated by using cluster analysis. Selected climate exposure parameters of the REMO and ALADIN models were analysed, in particular, for extreme events (days with precipitation greater than 30 mm, heat waves, dry periods, wet periods) and for daily temperature and precipitation. The landscape functions impacted by climate change are proxies for the main recent and future problematic processes in Hungary. Soil erosion caused by water, drought, soil erosion caused by wind, mass movement and flash floods were analysed for the time periods of 1961-1990, 2021-2050 and 2071-2100. Based on the sensitivity thresholds for the impact assessments, the landscape functional sensitivity indicators were interpreted, and an integrative summary of the five indicators was made, differentiating the regions facing only a few or multiple sensitivities. In Central Hungary, the increasing exposure and sensitivity to droughts will be a serious problem when following the REMO scenario. In several regions, most indicators will change the sensitivity threshold from a tolerable risk to an increased or very high risk. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.