The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Climate Scenarios in Vulnerability, Impact and Adaptation Assessments: an overview AIACC Scenarios Training Course Norwich, April 2002 Dr Mike Hulme

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI What we might ideally like …. … daily weather, for a place, for now and for a future year Norwich

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Why does creating climate scenarios give us so many problems? Problem 1. Models are not accurate …. … so we ‘cannot’ use data from climate models directly in environmental or social simulation models

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Why does creating climate scenarios give us so many problems? Problem 2. Different climate models give different results … … so we have difficulty knowing which climate model(s) to use

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Why does creating climate scenarios give us so many problems? Problem 3. It is expensive to run many (global/regional) climate model experiments for many future emissions …..… so we often have to make choices about which emissions scenarios from which we build our climate scenarios

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Why does creating climate scenarios give us so many problems? Problem 4. Climate models give us results at the ‘wrong’ spatial scale … … so we have to develop and apply one or more downscaling methods.

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Our problems would be much easier if …. Climate models were fully accurate Different climate models gave the same results One could run a GCM experiment over 200 simulated years in one day on a PC Climate models had a resolution of 1km But they don’t!

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Be clear about what you need …..  How many scenarios do you want? Which uncertainties are you going to explore?  What non-climate information do you need in your scenario(s)?  Do you need local data for case studies/sites, or national/regional coverage?  What spatial resolution do you really need – 300k, 100k, 50k, 10k, 1k? Can you justify this choice?  Do you need changes in average climate, or in variability?  Do you need changes in daily weather, or just monthly totals?  What climate variables are essential for your study?

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI A framework for conducting integrated assessment of climate change for policy applications NB. this has a UK interpretation

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Historical climate data …. … necessary as a baseline and also to explore historical/current vulnerability

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI The four IPCC SRES storylines … a major international effort to construct an overarching framework for thinking about the future with regard to emissions of greenhouse gases ….. global and continental rather than national and local.

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Downscale SRES socio-economic scenarios

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI … or create socio-economic scenarios bottom-up for local communities or regions

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Incremental Scenarios for Sensitivity Analysis Advantages – easy to construct and apply, allows sensitivity of sectors/models to be explored Disadvantages – arbitrary (and unrealistic) changes, not related to wider scenario frameworks

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Scenarios from Global Climate Model Experiments Advantages – easily accessible, numerous model runs, global in scale, numerous variables Disadvantages – coarse resolution (300km), daily extremes poorly represented

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI % WINTER PRECIPITATION FROM 9 CLIMATE MODELS

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Overcoming problem 2 (model differences) - vintage - validation - credibility - resolution - accessibility - politics!

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Problem 4: Spatial scale – downscaling options

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Scenarios from Regional Climate Model Experiments Advantages – higher resolution (50km), local geography well represented, daily weather extremes more realistic Disadvantages – few runs available, can be time- consuming to run, not good for representing uncertainties in risk assessment

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Spatial scale may still be a ‘problem’ (problem 4)

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI UKCIP 1998: GLOBAL MODELUKCIP 2002: REGIONAL MODEL 300km grid 50km grid

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI The model will still not be ‘accurate’ (problem 1)

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI WINTER PRECIPITATION OVER BRITAIN

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Overcoming problem 1 (accuracy) … Use raw GCM/RCM outputs (rarely done) Add model-derived changes to an observed baseline -mean changes (common) -inter-annual changes (less common) Calibrate and perturb a weather generator – Rob Wilby Applying an empirical downscaling method – Bruce Hewitson

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI - Simple interpolation of model changes (300k, 50k, 14k) onto an observed climatology (1k, timeseries) - Weather generators – to places or catchments or grids - Statistical downscaling Overcoming problem 4 (scale) (may have to be tackled whether using GCMs or RCMs) …

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Simple interpolation – combining observed data with modelled changes

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Scenarios from Weather Generators Advantages – site or locality specific scenarios, long and multiple daily weather sequences produced Disadvantages – requires a lot of historic data to calibrate, based on empirical relationships which may change, climate model data not always available

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Representing uncertainties (especially emissions uncertainties – problem 3) remains an issue

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Scenarios from Climate Scenario Generators Advantages – easily to explore uncertainties, multiple & integrated scenarios, accessible Disadvantages – coarse resolution (300km), no daily data, not readily updated

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI MAGICC/SCENGEN framework

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Probabilistic Scenarios for Risk Assessment Advantages – makes (some) uncertainties explicit, good for risk assessment, can be applied at different scales Disadvantages – not yet a well developed methodology, requires a lot of model data to develop, expert assumptions still needed

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI UKCIP02 scenario strategy

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI How will you link climate and non-climate scenarios? Decided to link SRES futures with UK climate scenarios We chose A1FI, B2, A2 and A1 1-to-1 mapping of climate and non-climate scenarios

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI What non-climate information is needed in your project? Non-climatic – socio-economic – indicators for the UK have been produced by the UK Climate Impacts Programme for each of the four SRES storylines

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI What types of uncertainties are critical to your project? Both emissions and modelling uncertainties are important Our strategy was to explicitly quantify the emissions uncertainty (4 different emissions spanning the IPCC range), but only to provide general guidance about the relative importance of modelling uncertainty

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI What climatic variables are required for I, A & V assessments in your project? A wide range - T, P, SL, CO2, RH, snow, cloud, etc., surface rather than upper air, however We aimed to produce generic climate scenarios for many different applications (UKCIP, government policy, academic research, public awareness, etc.)

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI At what spatial and temporal scales are these variables required? We decided that we must have information at 50km resolution We needed to analyse both monthly and daily data

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI What baseline climate data are you planning to use? A 5km gridded, dataset for UK 26 surface climate variables Monthly series for

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Which project(s) in your region you envisage you will be able to collaborate with to develop climate scenarios? We worked with the government (Ministry of Environment), climate modellers (Hadley Centre) and users (through the UK Climate Impacts Programme)

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Designing climate scenarios is largely an exercise in handling uncertainties … Source: Hadley Centre

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI To provide data for impact/adaptation/assessment studies To act as an awareness-raising device To aid strategic planning and/or policy formation To scope the range of plausible futures To structure our knowledge (or ignorance) of the future To explore the implications of decisions To function as learning-machines, bridging analyses and participation Purpose(s) of (climate) scenarios ….. To make predictions of the future – [wrong]

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI Temperature and precipitation: effects of natural variability

The Tyndall Centre comprises nine UK research institutions. It is funded by three Research Councils - NERC, EPSRC and ESRC – and receives additional support from the DTI