Presentation to the UK Climate Projections event for the third sector at Defra's Innovation Centre, Reading on 28 July 2009.
Dr Alastair Brown
UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP)
1. UK Climate Projections - UKCP09 Third Sector Projections in Practice Event, Reading, 28 July 2009 Dr Alastair Brown, UK Climate Impacts Programme
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6. UKCIP and UKCP09 UKCIP - UK Climate Impacts Programme http://www.ukcip.org.uk UKCP09 - 2009 Climate Projections http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk UKCP09 launched on 18 June 2009
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9. UKCP09 â Responding to Users 25 km grid Marine Administrative River Basin 30-year time periods Uncertainty Spatial resolution Temporal resolution
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11. Uncertainty: â How hot?â Answer 1 Answer 2 â 42 ° C â No information on uncertainty Very acceptable to some May be misunderstood as âno uncertaintyâ Uncertainty is explicit May be unwelcome â much more work required Better decisions possible
26. Useful Websites UK Climate Projections (UKCP09) http://ukcp09.defra.gov.uk UKCP09 Technical Site http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk UKCP09 Helpdesk http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/helpdesk Training & e-learning resources for UKCP09 http://www.ukcip.org/training
Hinweis der Redaktion
UKCIP published climate change scenarios on 1998 and 2002. Before UKCIPâs first publication in 1998 the Met office and other scientific centres had been modelling climate. UKCIP scenarios have always used the best information and techniques available and have evolved as our knowledge of climate, available computing power and understanding of stakeholder needs have grown and developed. Each report reflected the cutting edge of climate science at the time it was published. Climate science has moved substantially since 2002, and can now provide us with probabilistic information helping us explore the range of expected changes. Most importantly since 1991, the audience for this information has changed substantially. Back in the early 1990s this was almost exclusively used within academic realms and by climate change specialists â and undoubtedly by those early government climate negotiators (Rio Earth Summit 1992). Over time the range of people that use the reports has grown and UKCIP02 is used by thousands of people in a very diverse range of situations, and we expect that UKCP09 will push these boundaries further still as the information becomes more readily accessible.
As a stakeholder led organisation, UKCIP have been able to respond to user needs for the new climate projections. These needs reflect a desire for greater consideration of the uncertainties associated with climate projections and a way of trying to quantify them. The 50km grid square provided in the last set of projections did not provide enough detail of the climate variables and so the users required greater detail in the way the new projections represented time and space. Users also wanted to be able to have greater access to the data and as a result the User Interface was developed to support the way the projections can be interrogated. The final demand from users was to include more climate change detail on marine environments.
We believe the provision of probabilistic climate projections is an important and useful advance. PDFs and CDFs will become the main âcurrencyâ of UKCP projections. PDFs good for showing range or projections, and the probabilities within that range (i.e. its shape) CDFs good for probability of exceedance
UKCP09 will be delivered using a layered approach. Key findings â key messages within the reports Published material â reports etc (paper and online) Customisable â images and data Each layer will provide greater degrees of detail and will require a greater amount of understanding and interpretation.
T he products can be arranged according the data sources they are taken from. T he tube lines represent journeys of information that can be taken to identify more detail knowledge to help in decision making.
The User Guidance on the UKCP09 dedicated website provides clear guidance on the use of t he projections, including the methods underpinning them and the range of products and tools used to access the data. Support is provided on appropriate ways to use the products and how to interpret the results generated from them.
To support engagement with t he User Interface a dedicated âHow to ⊠â manual has been written. This can be used to help generate requests ranging in sophistication and to answer questions as to why certain procedures or available or not.
A dedicated training programme has been developed to support user engagement immediately after the launch. These will involve a series of familiarisation workshops and hand-on training in accessing the data. eLearning support will provide dedicated training in using and applying the projections to user practice. Dedicated online environment can be used to create communities of practice where peer-support can help users develop best practice.
T here will be a range of support mechanisms available to stakeholders using UKCP09. This reflects the user need at the start for having greater accessibility and so the majority of the support is available through online environments.
When thinking about using UKCP09 in many cases it is precipitated by events â either, local, national or international. This example is based on work that UKCIP have completed with Oxfordshire County Council â and is based around the 2006 heat wave â We began to wonder however how they might have used the UKCP09 package of information and imagined that we had a heat wave again in 2010 and looked at these issues for the first time. For Oxfordshire County Council it was the hot summer of 2010. During the summer temperatures were regularly exceeding 30 °C and council services were struggling to deliver the quality of service which the councillors and the citizens of Oxfordshire demand. During the Autumn of 2010 Councillors requested that a council wide âPost Event Reviewâ was undertaken to identify services which were particularly hard hit by the heat wave. Surprisingly one of the most significant impacts for the county came from breakdown of transport infrastructure, as several of the counties major roads melted in the heat, and for the first time in Oxfordshire, the gritters went out in the summer to lay road grit down to stabilise the melting surfaces.
R emember - The weather generator is an analytical tool that can be used to further analyse the projections to consider the relative frequency of exceeding a threshold. L arge data set â calculation based on 30X365X100 for each of the 6 variables Weather generator provides long sequence of daily output for grid squares representative of Oxfordshire Threshold detector tool in Weather Generator â can detect number of days that exceed a specified threshold Allows assessment of number of times there is a daily maximum temperature for 2 consecutive days > 35 °C: For 1961 to 1990 period (for validation) For 2030s and 2050s time periods ï° to estimate the changing risk