Future Climate: The UK Climate Projections (UKCP09)
The UK Climate Projections (UKCP09) are the latest generation of climate information for the United Kingdom.
The UKCP09 projections provide the most comprehensive package available and are based on state-of-the-art climate modelling, which for the first time provides a measure of uncertainty in the range of possible outcomes. They are the product of collaboration between the Met Office Hadley Centre, UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) and over thirty contributing organisations.
The UK Climate Projections (UKCP09) are made freely available through a website, which includes the briefing report (a good starting place), scientific reports and a range of pre-prepared maps and graphs. In addition, anyone can use the UKCP09 User Interface to produce customised data, maps, and graphs for a wide range of climate variables, time periods and locations.
Adaptation Scotland has compiled a supplementary compendium of UKCP09 outputs specific to Scotland. It is not intended to be a comprehensive source of outputs, but instead comprises a limited selection of maps and tables extracted from the UKCP09 User Interface. These provide easy access to some key climate variables, time periods, and locations in Scotland. <find out more>
The main component of the UK Climate Projections (UKCP09) is the probabilistic projections of climate change for land areas of the United Kingdom. These give projections of change for a number of climate variables, with three emissions scenarios, averaged over seven overlapping 30-year time periods, at 25km grid resolution, as well as for 'administrative regions' and 'river basin districts'. These provide greater spatial and temporal detail than previous climate scenarios (e.g. UKCIP02), and for the first time attach probabilities to the range of possible climate outcomes. <find out more>
The UKCP09 Weather Generator is an analytical tool that can generate statistically plausible daily and hourly time series for weather variables that are consistent with the underlying UKCP09 climate projections. The weather generator is a useful tool for those needing higher temporal and spatial resolution than is available from the probabilistic projections (note: they do not replace these and you need to be aware of assumptions and limitations of the weather generator). <find out more>
The UKCP09 projections include modelling of the marine and coastal environment providing information on sea level rise, changes in storm surge, sea surface and sub-surface temperature, salinity, currents, and waves. These marine projections are provided as three datasets: multi-level ocean projections; sea level rise projections; and storm surge projections. <find out more>
The UKCP09 is the fifth generation of climate information for the United Kingdom, and is the most comprehensive package produced to date. Although the previous generation climate scenarios (UKCIP02) have now been superseded, these have been the basis for many existing projects and/or decisions. It is important that users evaluate the robustness of their previous findings using UKCIP02. <find out more>