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Significant progress has been made since the release of the IPCC fourth assessment reports (AR4) (IPCC, Bernstein, et al. 2008) that outlined the physical basis and the impacts, adaptation and vulnerability in ascribing confidence to the direction of change and associated impacts. Both the data sets and climate models have progressed, as has the terminology used to ascribe confidence in the available evidence. A recent IPCC document (Mastrandrea et al. 2010) provides guidance for the treatment of uncertainties for the AR5 authors, whereby the evidence type, quality and consistency are combined with an assessment of agreement between evidence. There are also more rigorous statements to indicate the likelihood of a potential outcome using probability criteria. While the AR5 is still in development a special report on the risks of extreme events and disaster (IPCC 2012) updates the global assessment, with more rigorous terminology and consideration of the role of vulnerability and exposure in determining risk and impact. The salient points concerning water vulnerability in Europe are listed below;

i.    Exposure and vulnerability are key factors determining risk to hazards and associated impacts;

ii.   Extreme and non-extreme weather or climate events affect vulnerability to future extremes by modifying resilience, adaptive capacity and coping capacity;

iii.  The severity if climate extremes impacts depends on the level exposure and vulnerability to extremes;

iv.  Attention to temporal and spatial dynamics of exposure are particularly important when designing risk management policies that may reduce risk in the short-term, but increase long-term vulnerability (e.g. dike systems reduce flood exposure, but encourage settlement patterns that could lead to an increase in flood risk);

v.   Climate change leads to changes in the frequency, intensity, extent, duration and timing of extreme weather and climate events, and can result in unprecedented extremes;

vi.  Exposure and vulnerability are dynamic, varying across spatial and temporal scales;

vii. There is limited to medium evidence of climate-driven changes in magnitude or frequency of floods at regional scales – however, there is medium confidence that projected rainfall increases will lead to increases in certain catchments;

viii. There is medium confidence that droughts will intensify in the 21^st century, particularly in southern Europe, the Mediterranean and central Europe;

ix.   Extreme events will have the greatest impacts on sectors with close links to climate, such as water, agriculture and food security;

x.   There is high confidence that changes in climate have the potential to seriously affect water management systems, however this is not necessarily the most important driver of change at the local scale.