From National Climate Scenarios to National Climate Information

National Climate Scenarios provide a common basis for national risk assessment and adaptation planning. Recent examples include the UK’s UKCP18, the Netherlands’ KNMI23 and the Australian ‘Climate Change in Australia’ (2015).

Advances in climate modelling approaches provide the potential for a step change in the quality, and type of national climate scenarios that will likely be produced over coming years. While these advances include improvements in the traditional approaches employed in the provision of future climate projections for adaptation planning (updated global model ensembles, various downscaling approaches including convective permitting regional projections, improvements in constraining model ensembles), developments in a wider range techniques are increasingly being used in the assessment of climate resilience. These include large initial-condition ensembles, event attribution, the exploration of ‘High Impact Low Likelihood’ (HILL) scenarios, as well as the potential to exploit enhanced skill in initialised seasonal and decadal forecasts.

Here we will share what we are learning through parallel activities which seek to (a) develop our understanding of the needs of the diverse user community in the UK through an extensive user consultation to enhance usefulness and usability and (b) scope the opportunities emerging from the climate science community may have to address the gaps in existing information, and their readiness to contribute to a National Climate Information package.