CRU's contributions to UKCIP/UKCP climate projections

UEA's Climatic Research Unit has made significant contributions to the development of future climate change projections for the UK. The different generations of projections/scenarios are summarised here.

CCIRG91

CRU developed the climate change projections used by the UK's Climate Change Impacts Review Group (CCIRG) in both their 1991 and 1996 assessments. Some of the background science for the 1991 assessment, together with related UK climate projections, are available online in the paper by Warwick and Barrow (1991).

CCIRG. 1991. The Potential Effects of Climate Change in the United Kingdom. Department of the Environment: London. 124pp.

Warrick, R. A., & Barrow, E. M. (1991). Climate Change Scenarios for the UK. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 16(4), 387–399. https://doi.org/10.2307/623026.

CCIRG96

Again, CRU developed the climate change projections for the next assessment by the UK's CCIRG, a group of independent experts commissioned by the UK Government's Department of the Environment to assess the potential impacts of climate change on the UK.

CCIRG. 1996. Review of the Potential Effects of Climate Change in the United Kingdom. Department of the Environment: London. 247pp.

UKCIP98

CRU led the production and dissemination of the UKCIP98 projections published in 1998.

Hulme M, Jenkins G, Barrow E, Bohn L, Durman C, Eagles M, Gregory J, Lowe J, McDonald R, Mitchell J, New M, Osborn T and Viner D (1998) Climate change scenarios for the United Kingdom: scientific report. UKCIP technical report no. 1, Climatic Research Unit, Norwich, UK, 60pp.

A summary report is available here:

Hulme M and Jenkins G (1998) Climate change scenarios for the United Kingdom: summary report. Climatic Research Unit, UEA, Norwich, UK, 17pp.

UKCIP02

UEA, alongside the Met Office Hadley Centre, led the production of the UKCIP02 projections published in 2002.

A technical report is available here:

Hulme, M., Jenkins, G.J., Lu, X., Turnpenny, J.R., Mitchell, T.D., Jones, R.G., Lowe, J., Murphy, J.M., Hassell, D., Boorman, P., McDonald, R. and Hill, S. (2002) Climate Change Scenarios for the United Kingdom: The UKCIP02 Scientific Report. Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. 120pp

UKCIP02 projections data are archived at CEDA.

UKCP09

The Met Office Hadley Centre led the production of the UKCP09 projections published in 2009 (Murphy et al. 2009), while CRU/UEA and University of Newcastle led the development of the accompanying Weather Generator (Jones et al. 2010) to assist in the creation of downscaled (localised, daily timescale) scenarios.

P.D. Jones, C.G. Kilsby, C. Harpham, V. Glenis, A. Burton (2010) UK Climate Projections Science Report: Projections of Future Daily Climate for the UK from the Weather Generator. University of East Anglia and University of Newcastle, UK.

Murphy, J. M., Sexton, D. M. H., Jenkins, G. J., Booth, B. B. B., Brown, C. C., Clark, R. T., Collins, M., Harris, G. R., Kendon, E. J., Betts, R. A., Brown, S. J., Humphrey, K. A., McCarthy, M. P., McDonald, R. E., Stephens, A., Wallace, C., Warren, R., Wilby, R., Wood, R. A. (2009). UK Climate Projections Science Report: Climate change projections. Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, UK. 192pp.

UKCP18

The Met Office Hadley Centre led the production of the UKCP18 projections published in 2018 (Lowe et al. 2018). CRU pubished bias-corrected temperature, precipitation and potential evapotranspiration (PET) projections (Reyniers et al. 2023, 2024) derived from the UKCP18 RCM PPE at 12km resolution.

Lowe JA et al. (2018) UKCP18 science overview report. Met Office, UK. (available here).

Reyniers N, Osborn TJ, Addor N, Darch G (2023) Projected changes in droughts and extreme droughts in Great Britain strongly influen ced by the choice of drought index. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 27, 1151-1171 (https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-1151-2023).

Reyniers, N., Zha, Q., Addor, N., Osborn, T. J., Forstenhäusler, N., and He, Y. (in review, 2024) Two sets of bias-corrected region al UK Climate Projections 2018 (UKCP18) of temperature, precipitation and potential evapotranspiration for Great Britain. Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss. (https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-132).

Assessments and comparisons of these UK climate projections

Dessai and Hulme (2008) discuss the development of the first four generations of UK scenarios (CCIRG91, CCIRG96, UKCIP1998 and UKCIP2002) in the context of the needs of policy, science and decision makers.

Hulme and Dessai (2008) compare the UK temperature and precipitation projections from the first four generations of UK scenarios against subsequent observed changes. They found that observed trends up to 2007 had fallen "broadly within the range of published climate scenario projections", with the greatest ambiguity occurring for summer precipitation. They also note that relying on national scenarios built using one climate modelling framework may not always lead to robust adaptation because climate uncertainties that are not fully captured in such frameworks need to be considered.

Conway (1998) presented UK climate change scenarios for the UK in comparison with the earlier CCIRG scenarios.

Conway D (1998) Recent climate variability and future climate change scenarios for Great Britain. Progress in Physical Geography, 22, 350-374. https://doi.org/10.1177/030913339802200303.

Dessai, S & Hulme, M (2008) How do UK climate scenarios compare with recent observations?, Atmospheric Science Letters, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 189-195. https://doi.org/10.1002/asl.197.

Hulme M and Dessai S (2008) Negotiating future climates for public policy: a critical assessment of the development of climate scenarios for the UK. Environmental Science & Policy, 11, 54-70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2007.09.003.

License

These datasets are made available under the Open Database License. Any rights in individual contents of the datasets are licensed under the Database Contents License under the conditions of Attribution and Share-Alike.

CRU'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO UK CLIMATE PROJECTIONS