Climate change has already altered the weather we experience and the magnitude of impacts from extreme temperatures and rainfall. These impacts manifest locally and can cause human causalities and damage to infrastructure and natural systems. In future, some further climate change is now inevitable, but the rate and magnitude of change will depend on global greenhouse gas emissions. New data and tools to use the data are available to help plot a path through the climate and weather challenges, enabling organisations at all scales to adapt to the changing conditions.
5. Extreme weather is causing impacts in Wales (and the rest of the UK)
High temperature: July 2022 Flooding
Breaking records:
• Welsh Maximum temperature
record broken: 37.1°C
(previously 35.2°C)
• Welsh Minimum temperature
record broken: 24.5°C
(previously 22.2°C)
• Overall 8th hottest summer on
record for Wales
Not just heat
• Summer rainfall in Wales was
just 54% of the seasonal
average.
• Pembrokeshire saw a hosepipe
ban enforced from 19th August
until the 25th October.
View of Bute Park and Cardiff Castle after Storm
Dennis (Image: Jonathan Lawrance/WalesOnline
The Storm Dennis aftermath (Getty Images)
Examples from Storm Dennis (Feb 2020) when rivers in
south and east Wales reached record levels, after a
months rain was recorded in 24 hours.
Initial estimates of £175m-£225m worth of damage to
homes and businesses (PwC).
7. The current national pledges of emission reductions when added
together do not limit peak global warming below 1.5°C
This means society will also need to
adapt
But we don’t know precisely how much!
Current emission pledges
8. Working together on
UK Climate Projections
UKCP18 is new set of climate
projections produced for UK
stakeholders to use to investigate
their physical climate risks
12. Periods with 2 consecutive
days with temperature above
30°C could become around
16 times more likely
The rainfall associated
with a 2-year return period
increases by 29% by 2070s
First national climate scenarios at convection-permitting
scale to simulate improved extreme weather
UKCP Local (2.2km) projections
14. The Met Office launched the climate data portal in May 2022
The aim is to help with
two challenges:
Making climate data,
observations and models
easier to access
Making it easier to bring
together climate data with
information relevant to
users – exposure and
vulnerability
15.
16.
17. Some other Wales specific examples: landslip onto railway lines
Future January precipitation projections Overlay onto terrain,
then look at gradient
Bring in the railway
line locations
18. Some other Wales specific examples: landslip onto railway lines
Construct a simple landslide risk index
This could be refined further:
• Look at soil type
• Look at local drainage information
• Look at climate extremes
20. What are people saying about the climate portal?
'it becomes possible to service a
much larger number of customers,
and to provide them with a better
service though saving millions of
minutes of time.’ Carbon accounting
business.
'The really big benefit is
that we can quite quickly
take a look spatially at the
data to get an idea of if this
is actually going to be
useful for our purposes’.
A national nature based
charity.
‘We hope to use this information to
better understand what extreme
climate we can expect in certain
places in the future (e.g. extreme
rainfall events) and so we can take
early adaptation action in these
specific places to mitigate potential
impacts - evidence based land
management decision making! A
Government agency in Scotland
‘If I could say this is going to
happen and it is backed by
science then I’d have a
stronger case... get the
powers that be to take
things seriously’ - Cardiff
City Council
21. Optimise the energy
from renewable sources
Meet regulatory
reporting requirements
Formulate climate-aware
land management plans
How can you use the data?
Developing resilient
transportation
networks
Understanding the health
implications of climate
change
Adapting cities, urban
spaces and housing
22. Professor Jason Lowe,
OBE
Scan the QR code to visit the
climate data portal today...
https://climate-themetoffice.hub.arcgis.com/