Prof. Paweł Rowiński, Vice-President of the Polish Academy of Sciences, talks about how climate change will affect Poland and what signs of it should we look for in our rivers.

When a certain Buddhist monk was once setting out on a long, difficult journey, he chose as his traveling companion a servant who was known for having a rebellious and quarrelsome nature. When asked why, he replied that he wanted to practice patience and humility. One might say that the three years when I headed the international CHIHE project were a similar lesson in virtues.

It is widely known and accepted that the global climate is changing with unprecedented speed. Climate models project increasing temperatures and changes in precipitation regimes which will alter the frequency, magnitude, and geographic distribution of climate-related hazards including flood, drought and heat waves. In the mining industry, climate change impacts are an area of research around the world, mostly in relation to the mining industry in Australia and Canada, where mining policies and mitigation actions based on the results of this research were adopted and applied. In Poland, there is still a lack of research on how climate change, and especially extreme weather events, impacts mining activity. This impact may be of particular importance in Poland, where the mining industry is in the process of intensive transition. The paper presents an overview of hazardous events in mining in Poland that were related to extreme weather phenomena. The needs and recommended actions in the scope of mitigating the impact of future climate change on mining in all stages of its functioning were also indicated. The presented analyses and conclusions are the results of the first activities in the TEXMIN project: The impact of extreme weather events on mining activities, identifying the most important factors resulting from climate change impact on mining.