Climate change: assessing the impacts - identifying responses

Report

This Report presents the work that has been undertaken in the first three years of the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP). The Programme was established by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) with the aim of establishing a research framework for the integrated assessment of climate change impacts in the UK. Its specific objective is to coordinate and integrate a stakeholder-led assessment of the impacts of climate change at a regional and national level. Assessments under the UKCIP will provide Government and private-sector decisionmakers with information needed to underpin the development of strategies to adapt to climate change. Studies within the Programme fall into two broad groups: sub-UK scoping studies and sectoral studies, which are undertaken in a modular way within a common framework. In the first three years of the Programme five sub-UK assessments studies have been undertaken, four sectoral studies are underway and four further studies are at inception. The results of completed studies are contained in a set of separate Summary and Technical reports for each area1. In addition, tools to support studies have been developed.

This Report has four purposes:
1. To explain the approaches and methods which have been developed within the Programme, for the benefit of organisations and the research community within the UK and internationally;
2. To enable the next stage of the work of UKCIP to be planned, so that it meets the needs for national policy and supports organisations at a regional and national scale to prepare adaptation responses;
3. To provide a concise synthesis of the results of studies obtained so far and cross-cutting themes emerging, so these can be assimilated in policy-making and strategic planning; 4. To provide a portfolio of future studies for the next phase of the research programme which is needed to achieve a national assessment.
The UKCIP integrating framework is presented in Chapter 1. Results of the sub-UK scoping studies are presented in Chapter 2 and the methodological work underway in the sectoral studies is presented in Chapter 3. This Chapter also contains a review of current sectoral work which is related to the UKCIP framework. In Chapter 4, an attempt is made to integrate and assess study findings and the methods used. Recommendations for future research are outlined in Chapter 5.

• Alternative title: The first three years of the UK Climate Impacts Programme
• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Reviewed (other)
• Publisher: Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions
• Publication date: 2000-01-01
• Edition: Publisher's version
• Language: English
• Keywords: adaptation policy; adaptation research; UKCIP; adaptation science; climate change impacts
• Subjects: Climate systems and policy; Climate change adaptation; climate change impacts