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In the framework of planning and designing resilient housing under a changing climate, the present study constitutes a comprehensive literature review exploring climate-proofing solutions for the built environment concerning energy supply and water availability. This study delved into a multitude of sources that included scientific papers and reports and European Union guidelines and tools. The identified solutions covered building, urban, and territorial scales. The hazards of interest included heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, earthquakes, wildfires, and storms. Several types of solutions were found (e.g., nature-based, education/capacity-building, engineering/built environment, etc.) with different times of application and timescales of action (e.g., defensive measures, short-term solutions, long-term adaptive, etc.). The maturity of the identified solutions was assessed based on the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) and Societal Readiness Level (SRL). Moreover, each solution's contribution to climate mitigation was investigated. The solutions were assessed in terms of self-sustainability and other key criteria, namely, effectiveness, contribution to resilience maturity and climate change mitigation, adaptive nature, financing access, risk reduction, and social cohesion. In total, 85 energy and water solutions were determined from the desk review analysis and 67 (30 for the energy sector and 37 for the water sector) solutions were finally retained and proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As warmer and drier conditions associated with global warming are projected to increase in southern Europe, the Mediterranean countries are currently the most prone to wildfire danger. In the present study, we investigated the statistical relationship between drought and fire weather risks in the context of climate change using drought index and fire weather-related indicators. We focused on the vulnerable and long-suffering area of the Attica region using high-resolution gridded climate datasets. Concerning fire weather components and fire hazard days, the majority of Attica consistently produced values that were moderately to highly anti-correlated (−0.5 to −0.9). This suggests that drier circumstances raise the risk of fires. Additionally, it was shown that the spatial dependence of each variable on the 6-months scale Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI6), varied based on the period and climate scenario. Under both scenarios, an increasing rate of change between the drought index and fire indicators was calculated over future periods versus the historical period. In the case of mean and 95th percentiles of FWI with SPEI6, abrupt changes in linear regression slope values were observed, shifting from lower in the past to higher values in the future periods. Finally, the fire indicators' future projections demonstrated a tendency towards an increasing fire weather risk for the region's non-urban (forested and agricultural) areas. This increase was evident from the probability distributions shifting to higher mean and even more extreme values in future periods and scenarios. The study demonstrated the region's growing vulnerability to future fire incidents in the context of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South European and Mediterranean countries traditionally suffer from water scarcity, especially the regions around the Mediterranean. In Cyclades, the effects of drought have historically been observed and tackled with small-scale applications, with the most efficient method being rainwater harvesting (RWH). RWH is an inherent aspect of the local population's culture and architecture, since most houses have built-in water tanks and flat roofs to harvest as much rainwater as possible. In recent decades, the increase in local population and tourism have added additional stress to the limited water resources of the Cycladic islands. To overcome water shortages, most of the islands are equipped with desalination plants. Despite the use of these plants, RWH is still a vital source of water that is free and has zero carbon footprint. Thus, it is important to compare, assess and quantify the performance of this traditional water conserving method as a key water source for the islands' water resources management, today and for the coming decades. In this research, we investigate and quantify the future performance of rainwater harvesting applications and their contribution to continuous, sustainable, and climate-resilient water supply. The results show a decrease in rainwater harvesting potential in most of the islands, as well as the negative effect of touristic activity on per capita water availability on the islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to study wet-cold compound events (WCCEs) over Greece for the wet and cold season November-April. WCCEs are divided in two different compound events (TX-RR) and (TN-RR) and two different approaches using fixed (RR over 20 mm/day and Temperature under 0 °C) and percentile (RR over 95th and Temperature under 5th) thresholds. Observational data from the Hellenic National Meteorology Service (HNMS) and simulation data from reanalysis and EUROCORDEX models were used in the study for the historical period 1980-2004. Simulation datasets from projection models were employed for the near future period (2025-2049) to study the impact of climate change on the occurrence of WCCEs under RCP 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios. Following data processing and validation of the models, the potential changes in the distribution of WCCEs in the future were investigated based the projected and historical simulations. WCCEs determined by fixed thresholds were mostly found over high altitudes with a future tendency to reduce particularly under RCP 8.5. On the other hand, WCCEs obtained with percentile thresholds, were distributed mostly in Eastern Greece and Crete while their changes differed significantly among models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is set to affect extreme climate and meteorological events. The combination of interacting physical processes (climate drivers) across various spatial and temporal scales resulting to an extreme event is referred to as compound event. The complex geography and topography of Greece forms a variety of regions with different local climate conditions affecting the daily minimum temperature and precipitation distributions and subsequently the distribution of compound events of low temperature and high precipitation values. The aim of our study in this work is to identify these wet–cold events based on observational data from the Hellenic National Meteorological Service (HNMS) stations, which are divided into five different geographical categories, in the period 1980–2004 and coldest months of the year (November-April) on monthly basis. Two available reanalysis products, that of ERA-Interim downscaled with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model at 5km horizontal resolution (WRF_5), and the coarser resolution (∼30 km) ERA5 Reanalysis dataset from European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), are adopted to derive a gridded monthly spatial distribution of wet–cold compound events, after performing a comparison with the observations. The results yield that the monthly maximum HNMS probabilities range from 0.07 % in April to 0.85 % in February, ERA5 range from 0.4 % in April to 2.97 % in February and WRF_5 from 10.4 % in November to 25.04 % in February. The results also displayed that February, January and December, are in this order, the months with the highest WCCEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measurements of both mass (PM10, PM2.5, PM1) and number concentration of particles (diameter between 0.30 and 20 μm), were employed at a coastal background area of Athens during the summer period July-August 2008. The daily concentrations of PM10, PM2.5 and PM1 did not exceed 74.7μg/m3, 47.3μg/m3 and 32.0μg/m3, respectively while the maximum value for the number concentration of particles was recorded for those with diameter varying between 0.30 and 0.40μm (236294 number concentration/l). The acquired data underline the determinant role of transportation to the configuration of the particulate pollution of an area, clearly suggesting the non local role of the emissions. The dependence of the aerosols behavior on the prevailing meteorological conditions (temperature, relative humidity, wind, atmospheric circulation) was also evaluated. The very few associations between the particles (number and mass) and the meteorological parameters fluctuations confirm the hypothesis of the complicity of the PM character. Taking into account the experimental data and the trajectory analysis results, the obtained picture was characterized by high concentrations during the domination of North flow (days with the combination of high-low pressure systems and/or the strong north wind regime), with intrusions of polluted air masses from both regional and large scale distances. Being registered only during the specific wind regime, the exceedances of both E.U. and E.P.A. daily PM10 and PM2.5 limit values support further the previous assumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supercritical Fluid Extraction (SFE) with CO2 is often applied to extract organic trace compounds from environmental samples. For the purpose of extracting sufficiently organic compounds from samples with the method of SFE-CO2, CO2 of high purity is required. Because of the lack of detailed information on the identity and concentrations of impurities in commercially available CO2 and the widely varying cost of different CO2 types, five different CO2 brands were analyzed for their impurities. The experiments have been performed using an on-line combination of the SFE extractor and GC chromatograph. Furthermore, liquid CO2 of all brands was also passed through an active charcoal trap before entering the SFE-GC combination to investigate the effectiveness of the trap on the impurity results. To eliminate impurities of previously analyzed CO2 samples from the analytical system, the analysis of all CO2 brands, with and without charcoal filter, has been repeated several times until a stable impurity level was achieved. The evaluation of the chromatograms was carried out using two different integration procedures. The differences found in the results on the sum of the impurities in the brands, between the cases with or without a charcoal filter, were in the range of 18 to 116 when applying the automatic integration approach. The respective range of the results in the case of manual integration, including the unresolved part of the eluting impurities, was lower with values found between 5 and 18. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]