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Oxford City Council

Objectives: The purpose of this project was to distill the large amount of information available in the UKCIP09 user interface into an easily usable form. The information was also used to support research into Oxford City Council's recent LCLIP which is planned to be an aid to decision making. The outputs are available on a page on the Oxford city council website and in detail on a downloadable data sheet.

  • How were UKCP09 products used?
  • A 25 km square was chosen to represent Oxford.
  • The 2030s time period was chosen as this is seen as a relevant time period for decision-making in the council. As a district authority budgets are set yearly and targets, usually, three yearly, while longer-term plans cover periods of up to 20 years.
  • The medium emissions scenario was chosen so as not to be either too cautious or too dramatic.
  • Multiple runs on the user interface were done to generate CDF data files.
  • For each of the files, the values for the 10, 50 and 90% probability levels were extracted. These probability levels were chosen to represent the full probability range.
  • All the information collected was collated and used to display in summary form on the councils website, along with information about how to interpret the results.
  • Difficulties & limitations
  • Using the user interface for so many runs was slow even with the ability to alter an existing CDF plot. This exercise was done before the CDF data was available from the CSV Archive Browser so this may improve the situation.
  • Lessons learned
  • It is difficult to communicate projections that appear to have a wide range e.g. for change in summer precipitation the likely range is -28.9 to +21.7%. This could be interpreted as saying "anything might happen including nothing much at all".
  • Wind is perhaps the most destructive and dangerous impact to Oxford after flooding hence the lack of wind projections in UKCP09 is a concern.
  • It is advisable to seek advice from UKCIP in order to keep the science interpretation accurate - especially if the projections are being translated into plain English. 

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  • How will the results be communicated to the target audience?
  • The results are available on the official Oxford City Council website. See Further information for the link.
  • It is available in a very short Key Findings section, a longer summary, more technical supporting information and complete data sheet as a download.
  • The challenge is now to communicate the key findings of the exercise both internally and externally, to ensure that individuals, community groups, businesses and public sector officers have the information needed to identify and take appropriate adaptive action.

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  • Contact details: Charlie Morris-Marsham, Oxford City Council.