Climate change is expected to intensify the existing risks, particularly in regions where water scarcity is already a concern, as well as create new opportunities in some areas. Efforts to develop adaptation strategies for agricultural water management can benefit from understanding the risks and adaptation strategies proposed to date. This understanding may assist in developing priorities for the adaptation of water resources for irrigation. Here we characterise the main risks across European regions and evaluate adaptation strategies by reviewing over 168 highly relevant publications that appeared in the last 15 years. Based on this extensive database we characterise the effort and benefit of a number of agronomic and policy measures, aiming to develop concrete adaptation plans and responding to concrete regional challenges. The adaptation choices consider current technological perspectives and do not project future technological change; we are certain that technological change will shape some choices for adaptation in the coming decades. The greatest scope for action is in improving adaptive capacity and responding to changes in water demands, however the implementation requires revamping current water policy, adequate training to farmers and viable financial instruments. These results aim to assist stakeholders as they take up the adaptation challenge and develop measures to reduce the vulnerability of the sector to climate change

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.