What other sources of information are there for exploring the impacts of climate change?

There are other sources of information available for exploring climate change impact, both those provided by UKCIP, and many external resources. Although they can be very helpful, the UK Climate Projections should not be thought of as the only, or necessarily the best, source of information to explore future impacts; it depends on the problem being addressed. The UKCIP Adaptation Wizard tool gives a summary of the applicability of different UKCIP tools to solving adaptation issues.

In detail

in addition to the UKCP09 climate scenarios, UKCIP provides a range of tools via the website which are a useful source of information for exploring climate change. These include:

• Adaptation Wizard (on the UKCIP website) – takes you through a process to help determine your vulnerability to climate change, identify your key climate risks, and enable you to develop a climate change adaptation strategy. Also a guide to all of the information, tools and resources UKCIP can offer.

• Socio-economic scenarios (on the UKCIP website) – Scenarios to help explore what future worlds might look like and to consider how our vulnerability to climate change and adaptation responses might vary with different future worlds.

• Risk framework (on the UKCIP website) – A step-by-step decision-making framework to help you judge the significance of your climate change risk compared to the other risks you face, so you can work out what adaptation measures are most appropriate.

• Costing the impacts of climate change (on the UKCIP website) – A methodology for calculating the costs of climate impacts and how to compare these to the costs of adaptation measures.

• Business assessment tool (on the UKCIP website) – Helps users explore the implications of climate change for a particular business or sector.

• Local Climate Impacts Profile (on the UKCIP website) – A resource that Local Authorities can compile so that they better understand their exposure to weather and climate. 

• Nottingham Declaration Action Pack (on the Energy Savings Trust website) – A public commitment by council leaders and chief executives to tackle the causes and effects of a changing climate in their councils.

• Adaptation resources (on the UKCIP website) – A range of tools providing guidance on identifying adaptation options and adapting to climate change.

• The BRAIN (on the UKCIP website) – Base for Research, Adaptation, Impacts and News (aka our BRAIN) allows you to search for information on adaptation activities being undertaken by other organisations (Adaptation), examples of how we are already being affected by weather-related events (Impacts), examples of climate impacts and adaptation research being undertaken (Research) or articles previously included in Climate Digest.

The UKCIP website also contains information based around activities in the regions in the UK where UKCIP works alongside a climate change partnership to coordinate local action. There are also case studies available organised according to economic sector.