Quantitative estimates of the economic damages of climate change usually are based on aggregate relationships linking average temperature change to loss in gross domestic product (GDP). However, there is a clear need for further detail in the regional and sectoral dimensions of impact assessments to design and prioritize adaptation strategies. New developments in regional climate modeling and physical-impact modeling in Europe allow a better exploration of those dimensions. This article quantifies the potential consequences of climate change in Europe in four market impact categories (agriculture, river floods, coastal areas, and tourism) and one nonmarket impact (human health). The methodology integrates a set of coherent, high-resolution climate change projections and physical models into an economic modeling framework. We find that if the climate of the 2080s were to occur today, the annual loss in household welfare in the European Union (EU) resulting from the four market impacts would range between 0.2-1%. If the welfare loss is assumed to be constant over time, climate change may halve the EU's annual welfare growth. Scenarios with warmer temperatures and a higher rise in sea level result in more severe economic damage. However, the results show that there are large variations across European regions. Southern Europe, the British Isles, and Central Europe North appear most sensitive to climate change. Northern Europe, on the other hand, is the only region with net economic benefits, driven mainly by the positive effects on agriculture. Coastal systems, agriculture, and river flooding are the most important of the four market impacts assessed.climate adaptation policy | climate impact and adaptation assessment | integrated assessment model | computable general equilibrium

The risks to human populations in coastal areas are changing due to climate and socio-economic changes, and these trends are predicted to accelerate during the 21 st Century. To understand these changing risks, and the resulting choices and pathways to successful management and adaptation, broad-scale integrated assessment is essential. Due to their complexity these two risks are usually managed independently, yet frequently they are interconnected by longshore exchange of sediments and the resulting broad scale morphological system behaviour. Simply put, if beach levels rise or fall, flood risk in adjacent low-lying coastal areas decreases or increases respectively. In order to generate new insights into the effects of climate change and coastal management practises on coastal erosion and flood risk, we present an integrated assessment of 72 km of shoreline over the 21 st Century on the East Anglian Coast of England. A coupled system of hydrodynamic, morphological, reliability and socio-economic models has been developed for the analysis, which has been implemented under scenarios of climate and socio-economic change. The study is unique in coastal management terms because of the large spatial scale and extended temporal scales over which the analysis is quantified, but is also a site of significant controversy about how to manage coastal flood and erosion risks over the 21 st Century. This study for the first time quantifies what has for some years been argued qualitatively: the role of sediments released from cliff erosion in protecting neighbouring low-lying land from flooding. The losses and benefits are expressed using the common currency of economic risk. The analysis demonstrates that over the 21 st Century, flood risk in the study area is expected to be an order of magnitude greater than erosion risk. Both climate and socio-economic change can have a significant influence on flood risk. This study demonstrates that the choices concerning coastal management are profound, and there are clear tradeoffs between erosion and flood impacts.

This paper uses two models to examine the direct and indirect costs of sea-level rise for Europe for a range of sea-level rise scenarios for the 2020s and 2080s: (1) the DIVA model to estimate the physical impacts of sea-level rise and the direct economic cost, including adaptation, and (2) the GTAP-EF model to assess the indirect economic implications. Without adaptation, impacts are quite significant with a large land loss and increase in the incidence of coastal flooding. By the end of the century Malta has the largest relative land loss at 12% of its total surface area, followed by Greece at 3.5% land loss. Economic losses are however larger in Poland and Germany ($483 and $391 million, respectively). Coastal protection is very effective in reducing these impacts and optimally undertaken leads to protection levels that are higher than 85% in the majority of European states. While the direct economic impact of sea-level rise is always negative, the final impact on countries' economic performances estimated with the GTAP-EF model may be positive or negative. This is because factor substitution, international trade, and changes in investment patterns interact with possible positive implications. The policy insights are (1) while sea-level rise has negative and huge direct economic effects, overall effects on GDP Climatic Change (2012) are quite small (max −0.046% in Poland); (2) the impact of sea-level rise is not confined to the coastal zone and sea-level rise indirectly affects landlocked countries as well (Austria for instance loses −0.003% of its GDP); and (3) adaptation is crucial to keep the negative impacts of sea-level rise at an acceptable level.

This paper provides an overview of the development of the 'Regional Impact Simulator' -a user friendly software tool designed to allow stakeholders to perform integrated assessments of the effects of climate and/or socio-economic change on the important sectors and resources of two contrasting UK regions. This