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Plume plots

Plume plots display the temporal evolution of uncertainty in projected climate change at five probability levels, for a particular climate variable. The plot shows changes for a user defined location, averaging period and emissions scenario with values plotted for each of the seven UKCP09 30-year time periods and for each of the five probability levels.

Sea level projections plume plots display the temporal evolution of uncertainty in projected sea level change (both absolute and relative), at the 5, 50 and 95th percentiles. The plots show the change in sea level (relative to 1990 levels), through the time period 1990–2100. For more information, go to the Chapter 3 of the Marine & coastal projections report.

Plume plots can be produced using the UKCP09 User Interface , using the CDF data.

They can be produced for the Climate change projections, Marine & coastal projections and Sea level projections, and provide information for:

For probabilistic climate projections, the plume is represented by five lines which correspond to certain probability levels from the UKCP09 probability distribution: 10, 33, 50, 67 and 90%.

For sea level projections, the plume is represented by three lines which correspond to certain percentiles from the frequency distribution of different IPCC global climate models: 5th, 50th and 95th.

Plume plots can exported from the User Interface as images in various file formats (PDF, .ps, .png and .jpg). The underlying values can be exported as a comma-separated variable (*.csv) and CF-netCDF format file. CSV files can be opened as a spreadsheet.

  • What should I use them for?
  • To indicate how projected climate changes evolves through time
  • To identify by what time period a certain amount of climate change is projected to occur
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  • What to be aware of
  • Plume plots do not provide details of continuous projected changes through time

More details…
 

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