UKCIP

 

The UK Government set up the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) in 1997 to provide essential information to help decision-makers plan their response to the impacts of climate change. Defra funds UKCIP on behalf of the UK government and the devolved administrations.

The UKCIP02 climate change scenarios

The UKCIP02 climate change scenarios are derived from a series of climate modelling experiments undertaken by the Hadley Centre and analysed by the Tyndall Centre. The UKCIP02 scenarios are based on four different emissions profiles (i.e. four different ‘storylines’ describing how the world may develop in the decades to come). These are:

• Low Emissions (rapid uptake of new technology and adoption of sustainable policies)
• Medium-Low Emissions
• Medium-High Emissions
• High Emissions (an ongoing market-led economy reliant on fossil fuels).

For each scenario, the predicted change in future climate for the United Kingdom is calculated for three future time-slices:

• 2011 to 2040 (called the 2020s)
• 2041 to 2070 (called the 2050s)
• 2071 to 2100 (called the 2080s)

Within each time-slice, changes are presented for several time-scales:

• Changes in annual averages
• Changes in seasonal averages
• Changes in monthly averages
• Changes in the frequency of some extreme events

Changes to the UK climate are reported across a grid with 50 km cell size. At this scale, changes in climatic variables are presented either as differences or percentage changes relative to the modelled present day baseline climate (1961 to 1990). Some climate variables are further downscaled to a grid with 5 km cell size using simple interpolation. At this scale, absolute values of projected future UK climate are reported.

The climatic variables available include:

• Maximum/mean/minimum temperature (ºC)
• Total precipitation rate (mm/month)
• Snowfall rate (mm/day)
• Wind speed at 10m (m/s)
• Fractional cloud cover
• Specific humidity (g/kg)
• Relative humidity (%)
• Soil moisture content (mm)
• Net surface shortwave/longwave flux (W/m²)
• Total downward surface shortwave flux (W/m²)
• Surface latent heat flux (W/m²)
• Mean sea level pressure (hpa)
• Mean sea surface temperature (°C)

Selected derived variables

Maps, datasets and guidance associated with the UKCIP02 climate change scenarios can be accessed and downloaded from the UKCIP02 pages of the UKCIP website.