To assist long-term planning for future climate change, in 2002 the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP), on behalf of Defra (Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs) published a series of climate change scenarios for the UK. These give local projections for climate change.
- Temperature
Depending on the scale of global greenhouse-gas emissions, by the 2080s the average annual temperatures across the UK will have risen by between 2°C and 3.5°C, with extremely hot days more common and cold winters increasingly rare. In general, there should be more warming in the South-East, where average summer temperatures may be as much as 5°C higher.
- Rainfall
On average, winters may become wetter and summers drier across the UK, with the biggest changes in the South and East. By the 2080s summer rainfall may drop by as much as 50 per cent in the South-East, but heavy winter rainfalls are likely to be more frequent.
- Sea level rise
The sea level will rise in line with global changes, but with local variations due to changes in land height (Great Britain is still rebounding from the weight of ice it bore during the last ice age- the island is rising in the North-West and sinking in the South-East). By the 2080s, the sea levels in the South-East will rise by 26 to 86 cm.
- The UK climate will become warmer, with the average annual temperature by the 2080s projected to be between 2°C and 3.5°C higher than at present
- Hot summers will be more frequent, and extremely cold winters will become much less common
- Summers will become drier and winters will become wetter
- Although there will be less snowfall, heavy winter rains will become more frequent
- Sea levels will continue to rise with an estimated rise for South-East England of between 26 and 86cm by the 2080s, and extreme storm surges will be more frequent
The next set of UKCIP scenarios, due to be released in 2009, will be known as UKCP09 and will include better assessments of uncertainty, and better information on important parameters such as rainfall, wind, and river flow. It will be based on three, rather than the current four 'future-emissions' scenarios and the spatial resolution will be twice that of the 2002 projections (25 km 2 rather than 50 km 2 grid squares). Projections will be presented as probabilities.
To develop a strategic response to climate change, it is important to understand the nature of these projections, and their uncertainties. The current UKCIP02 scenarios do try to take into account how greenhouse gas emissions will change in the future . They also allow for the natural variability of the climate system as well as the technical limitations of climate modelling. Different emissions ’scenarios’ give different figures for climate change and it is up to the user to determine how much the different levels of risk affect planning.
UKCIP recommend that, wherever possible, decision makers should identify and adopt ‘no regret’ and ‘low regret’ options. Such actions would be worthwhile whatever the eventual change in climate. To take one mitigation example, limiting emissions has measurable public health benefits. Many adaptations are also 'low regrets': for example when gutters and down-pipes have reached the end of their useful life and need to be replaced, upgrading their replacements to have a higher capacity will cost very little extra but may prove an excellent investment if storminess increases.
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Climate Change Scenarios for the United Kingdom
The UKCIP briefing report April 2002
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