The UK Climate Impacts Programme
The UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) is an advisory service helping organisations make decisions on adapting to climate change. UKCIP:
- provides a range of tools to help others understand the possible impacts of climate change, including a set of scenarios that show how our climate might change at a regional and national level
- offers advice on adaptation
- assists with research.
UKCIP focuses on making complex scientific information understandable and useful to stakeholders. Their website is an excellent information source if you want to find out about the future climate of the UK and how to adapt.
The information available includes scenarios of how the climate will change in the UK. A set of scenarios was published in 2002.
UKCIP also produces a large number of publications every year. We currently contribute around £900,000 a year to UKCIP.
UK Climate Projections delay
Defra, Met Office Hadley Centre and UK Climate Impacts Programme have taken a decision to delay the launch of the UK 21st Century Climate Change Projections (2008) project.
This decision has been taken based on information provided by the Met Office Hadley Centre which needs more time to consolidate the climate projections. The Met Office is using ground-breaking science to produce the new climate projections – combining information from the widest possible range of global climate models.
This complex process requires further analysis which will unfortunately take more time than initially expected. The projections are now likely to be published in Spring 2009. Further information will be available as soon as possible.
About UK Climate Projections
The scenarios will describe how the climate of the UK might change during the 21st century, and offer an updated package of future climate information for the UK.
The scenarios are based on a new probabilistic methodology devised by the Met Office Hadley Centre.
They have been developed in line with user needs, and will provide projections of climate change up to 2099 over both land and sea. They will also contain sub-surface marine data.
Full details of how the scenarios were developed - and how they should be used - will be published on the projections website with the scenarios and background data.
There will also be an accompanying interactive user interface where users can create customisable outputs. We will add links to the UK Climate Projections website when this information is published.
The first of the UK Climate Projections reports, "The Climate of the United Kingdom and Recent Trends", was published on 7 December 2007. Copies can be ordered via UKCIP.
We are funding the development of UK Climate Projections (around £2 million) through contracts with the UK Climate Impacts Programme, Met Office Hadley Centre, British Atmospheric Data Centre and Newcastle University.
Tools to help you adapt
The UK Climate Impacts Programme provides a range of tools and guidance that can be used to help organisations identify how they might be affected by climate change and what they can do to minimise their risks or exploit the opportunities.
The tools include:
- an Adaptation Wizard to guide users through the first stages of thinking about adaptation
- scenarios of climate change for the UK
- socio-economic scenarios
- a database of adaptation case studies.
You can find more information and additional tools and guidance by visiting the UKCIP website.
Page last modified: 11 December 2008
Page published: 24 July 2008