Climate Change Viewer: User-Friendly Web Tool for Climate Change Tracking in Ukraine

Abstract

An effective climate-change-adaptation strategy should be based on user-friendly and reliable climate services. Due to the lack of such services in Ukraine, this study aimed to develop a web tool called “Climate Change Viewer” (https://climate.uhmi.org.ua/) to visualize climate change in Ukraine and support the development of adaptation measures on a regional scale. The tool’s temperature and precipitation data sets include gridded observation-based time series (1946–2020), climate ERA5-Land reanalysis (1981–2020), and high-resolution regional climate projections of the EURO-Cordex initiative (1981–2100). Regular grids of historical data sets and climate projections have been aggregated within the administrative units and main river basins of Ukraine. Climate Change Viewer shows that the observed warming trend across Ukraine remains within the projected range but exceeds the mean of the climate models’ ensemble. The projected precipitation tends to increase in the northwestern and decrease in the southeastern parts of Ukraine through the end of the 21st century. The tool’s user-friendly interface and regional binding can help increase the awareness of national and local authorities, businesses, and the public sector about future risks of warming and water availability. The further development of Climate Change Viewer also considers other environmental and sector-specific parameters.