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Climate Change

Climate change is on an onward trajectory, in spite of numerous efforts to halt it. Therefore, the challenge is to address what adaptation strategies are needed to tackle its potential impact. A key prerequisite for developing regional strategies is to be able to forecast the extent of climate change within the next 20, 50 or 100 years.

The Brandenburg/Berlin region has already experienced a 1°C increase in its mean annual temperature over a long-term period. The vegetation period has become longer. This has been particularly evident in the spring, when the vegetation period has been starting two to three weeks earlier than before.

Four different regional models offer climate scenarios for the region. These climate scenarios differ with regard to their basic assumptions about the increase in greenhouse gas emissions and in their method of calculation (statistics-based or model-based). Ongoing development of the models will yield further differences.

Previous model simulations suggest that a 2°C increase in the temperature of the region should be anticipated by the middle of the century.

The annual amount of precipitation, on the other hand, is only set to change slightly. Depending on which model is used, both slight increases and decreases are possible. However, it is expected that the trend over the past 50 years will continue and that winter precipitation will increase, whilst the amount of precipitation in summer will tend to decrease.