UK Climate Projections News

Read all the latest news about the UK Climate Projections (UKCP)

Issue with UKCP Local simulations - 14 October 2024

We are aware of an issue with some of our projections, which may affect users.  

Earlier this year we identified that our UKCP Local (2.2km and 5km) simulations contain some occurrences of extreme rainfall events, which are unrealistic in physical shape and intensity.  The most significant impacts are in the 2.2km dataset, and there are also lesser impacts to the 5km dataset.  

Although the issue only occurs in specific conditions, it can affect estimates of present-day extreme rainfall and future changes.   

We advise users against using the 2.2 km hourly rainfall data for analysis that supports decision-making. If any users have used or are planning to use the 2.2 km data, we recommend they perform a visual inspection of the precipitation data to understand the potential effects of the issue on their analysis. 

We haven’t yet found a robust method to completely remove or substitute the unphysical values. But we can provide some alternative data to allow users to test the likely impact on their analysis. 

Read our guidance document to find out more information. Users are advised to contact us if they have read our guidance and have any queries.   

UKCP webinars - 2023-24 onwards

We launched a new UK Climate Projections webinar series in September 2023. Since then a selection of speakers have shared how they’ve used our UKCP data and tools within their research. You can watch the series via our YouTube playlist, with the most recent webinar showing first. If you would like to find out about upcoming webinars, please email: [email protected]. 

New tool launched to assess the impact of future sea-level change - 30 November 2023 

To better understand how sea-level will change in different regions, the Met Office has developed the Projecting Future Sea Level (ProFSea) tool, which can generate sea-level projections for locations across the world. These local sea-level projections can be used to assess the impact of future sea-level change on coastal regions. By using this information within climate services, communities can make informed decisions and be better prepared for the future climate risk to stay safe and thrive.  

New UKCP user guidance documentation - 26 October 2023

Scientists in the Met Office Hadley Centre have released new guidance documentation for UKCP users. More information is available below.  

Rainfall and storms factsheets 

We have produced two new guidance documents to help UKCP users navigate different information sources about projected future changes to rainfall and storms. Our rainfall factsheet highlights current UKCP rainfall information and what users should consider when choosing a data product for application. The rainfall guidance also provides information on other relevant tools and datasets. Our storms factsheet summarises the recent and projected changes to thunderstorms and provides further information about windstorms. 

UKCP Starters' Guide

Our new UKCP Starters’ Guide provides a one-stop-shop for users to learn about different datasets and products available within UKCP. Users can either use the guide as a ‘walk through’ of the various components of UKCP, working through it section-by-section, or they can ‘dip in’ to information on a specific area they are working on. It also includes useful links, additional information as well as hints and tips.  The Starters' Guide is available as a trial, which users are invited to take part in. We would also welcome any user feedback. Is there anything we should add? Or do some parts need more explanation?  

UKCP User Interface and CEDA archive maintenance - 22 September 2023

The CEDA Archive, UKCP User Interface and JASMIN will all be unavailable from 23 October 2023 to 6 November 2023, due to essential maintenance work.

UKCP resources (including our key results spreadsheet, reports and headline findings) will remain available via the UKCP homepage. Climate datasets will also be able to be explored and downloaded in a range of file formats from the Met Office Climate Data Portal.

During this time we will review, and where possible improve, resilience of our key services.  

We would encourage users to make themselves aware of the implications, engage with us when necessary and inform their partners.

We would like to thank users in advance for their understanding.  

New UKCP Local Transient Projections data - 30 March 2023

Our UK Climate Projections (UKCP) suite of products help individuals and organisations be better informed about future climate risks, so they can make decisions and take action. We continually review and improve our UKCP data products and services to help people prepare for our future climate.   

Today, 30 March 2023, we have released additional data for our highest resolution (2.2km) UKCP Local 100-year dataset, spanning our historical, present and future climate. Our initial UKCP Local projections, released in September 2019 and updated in July 2021, provided data for three 20-year periods (1981-2000, 2021-2040 and 2061-2080). This latest update provides additional transient projections for the two time periods, 2001-2020 and 2041-2060.  

Our projections allow us to examine how climate change may impact local weather extremes up until 2080 in a high-emissions scenario. They provide a set of plausible outcomes for any given year to help urban planners, local authorities and flood management practitioners with adaptation planning. 

More information about the projections can be found in our UKCP Local Transient Technical Report and FAQs.  

The report introduces the new projections, outlining the advance in capability they provide, where they fit within our wider set of UKCP products, and how to access the data. It provides an assessment of their performance in representing present-day temperature, precipitation and other key climate indicators. This establishes the credibility of the UKCP Local projections for simulating future changes in climate and its variability at local scales, including local weather extremes.   

The report also presents example applications of the new projections, including examining how changes in local weather extremes are manifest through time and exploring the uncertainty in changes for global warming levels. Finally, the report outlines caveats on use of the data, including discontinuities in the 100-year timeseries and recommendations for handling unphysical data points. 

The new dataset has been used to inform a paper by Met Office Professor Lizzie Kendon and others published in Nature Communications. Professor Kendon’s research found that, under a high emissions scenario, rainfall events in the UK exceeding 20mm/hr could be four times as frequent by 2080 compared to the 1980s.  Professor Kendon spoke to Clare Nasir about the research for the Mostly Climate podcast. 

If you would like any further information or have any queries, please contact us using this form.  

Updates to UKCP sea levels datasets and observed datasets - 14th March 2023

As part of the continual review and improvement of UKCP data products and services, we have released some updates to UKCP datasets available vias CEDA and our interactive user-interface. The updates available from 14th March 2023 include:

  • an extension to our UKCP projected extreme sea levels data;
  • an update and correction to our UKCP time-mean sea level projections datasets, and;
  • an update to the HadUK-Grid observational data available through the UKCP User Interface

Extension of UKCP projected extreme sea levels information

UKCP18 included projections of future extreme sea levels at 46 UK tide gauge locations. In this update, we have extended the spatial coverage of these data to all open-coast Coastal Flood Boundary (CFB) point locations around the UK coastline.  This spatial extension consists of two datasets, one of projected future 21st Century time-mean sea-level projections for 2020-2100 and the other using exploratory extended time-mean sea-level projections for 2020-2300. Both datasets are offered as shapefiles

Further information about these updates can be found in the following UKCP guidance documents:

Update to UKCP time-mean sea-level projections

UKCP time-mean sea-level projections have been updated to correct a minor error in the adjustment applied to convert from the IPCC AR5 baseline of 1986-2005 to the baseline period of 1981-2000 used in UKCP18 for the site-specific sea-level projections. The update results in about a 1cm increase compared to the original data release for all UKCP18 site-specific sea-level projections at all timescales (i.e. sea-level rise at 2030 + 1cm, and sea-level rise at 2100 + 1cm).  While this adjustment is small and unlikely to be decision relevant, we encourage users to adopt the updated projections where this is practical.

Further details can be found in the accompanying technical note.

New observed data available through the UKCP User Interface

New observed data from the HadUK-Grid datasets are now available via the UKCP User Interface.

Gridded observations are now available at monthly, seasonal or annual resolution for more variables including mean sea level pressure, wind speed, days of frost, and days of sunshine. Furthermore, daily data are available for total rainfall, maximum temperature and minimum temperature. These data are up to and including 2021, with 2022 expected to become available following its release onto the CEDA Archive in the spring. Several grids are available to ease comparison with the different model resolutions in other strands of UKCP. The UKCP User Interface allows users to select data and output as maps or timeseries and in netCDF or csv file format.

 

27 January 2023: UKCP Users' Consultation Survey

Would you like to help to inform the future of UK climate information?   

The Met Office and Defra are launching a consultation of our UK Climate Projections (UKCP) service to gather user perspectives. This is an opportunity for you to share your experiences of using climate information, and to engage in deeper dialogue with climate experts at the Met Office and in the wider academic and private sector community. We are doing this now to take account of user experiences with climate change impacts and recent policy decisions and regulations. This two-way dialogue is also timely because the users and their climate information needs are evolving, and addressing these issues requires your input.  

We are encouraging users of climate information to complete a short survey, to find out how you are using climate information, including UKCP, what are barriers to information use, and how we could make future improvements to the service. All responses will be treated confidentially and comply with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) guidelines. Our survey will be open until Friday 17 February 2023, and it should take no longer than 20 minutes to do.   

If you would like to take part in our consultation, please click on the link to access the survey: https://forms.office.com/e/ywUsUTtCXb.   

 

4 August 2022: Update to UKCP Probabilistic Projections

On 4 August 2022 we released an update to the UKCP Probabilistic Projections to replace the dataset from November 2018. As part of the continual review and improvement of UKCP data products and services, we have updated the UKCP Probabilistic Projections. These include improvements to the methods for producing the data as well as correcting an inconsistency picked up by a user and a software error, as discussed in a previous news update.

Further information about these updates can be found:

The Headline Findings and Key Results spreadsheet, showing the updated projections, are available here. If you require any further assistance, please contact us using this form. 

 

19 April 2022: Observations now available on User Interface

The Met Office publishes the State of the UK Climate report annually each year, providing climate stories and an up-to-date assessment of UK climate for the previous year. Underpinning the report is the HadUK-Grid dataset which is a collection of gridded climate variables derived from a network of UK land surface observations. Find out more.

As part of the Defra-funded UKCP Climate Service, we have made these available on the UKCP User Interface at the original 1 km resolution as well as spatial resolutions to support the UK Climate Projections (i.e. 5 km, 12 km, 25 km, 60 km, national, administrative and river basin regions). All variables are available to download as data (in csv or netCDF format), with map or timeseries plots available for temperature or rainfall. Register at the UK Climate Projections User Interface to download them. Note that the data are also available from the CEDA Archive for those who are familiar with processing large climate datasets.

This will allow users to get the most up-to-date information about recent climate. Using this observational data from the past will facilitate better understanding of the current climate hazard, before considering how this is projected to evolve in our changing climate.

 

5 April 2022: Update to UKCP Probabilistic Projections

The UKCP18 probabilistic projections are available to help UKCP users explore uncertainty. They consist of 3000 individual realizations of 21st century climate change, plus a corresponding set of probability distributions. The probabilistic projections complement other sets of projections within the UKCP suite.

Since their launch in 2018, the UKCP projections have been subject to a program of updates.

During the past year, four improvements have been developed:

  • One fixes a software indexing error that affected the original projections of daily maximum and minimum temperature (Tmax and Tmin), leading to more consistent relationships between future changes in Tmax, Tmin and daily-average temperature.
  • The second improves the representation of extreme precipitation changes in the realizations and probability distributions.
  • The third and fourth developments improve the representation of natural climate variability in the realizations, and remove minor biases in the centring of projected climate anomalies relative to the historical baseline of 1981-2000.

During the checking and quality control process a downscaling software indexing error has recently been discovered. This converts results from global climate model simulations to smaller-scale UK projections for 25km grid squares and aggregated regions. A new set of probabilistic projections is under development, fixing this bug and hence providing an improved representation of the localised effects of mountains, coastlines and physical processes. This will form a fifth improvement to the updated probabilistic projections, with the aim that this will be provided to users during the summer.

The combined impacts of the first four improvements are generally small, compared with the broad uncertainty ranges found in the distributions. The impact of the downscaling fix is currently under assessment.

The suite of projections allow users to examine a range of data. It is always recommended that users interrogate the breadth of outputs to fully understand climate impacts. Relying on a single product within UKCP does not allow users to sample the full range, including uncertainties, within the projections.

 

13 January 2022: UKCP E-learning Launched

Would you like to find out how you can use the UK Climate Projections? Understand key concepts in climate modelling? Are you planning to use climate data in your application?

On 13 January 2021 we launched our freely available e-learning course to introduce you to the latest UK Climate Projections. At the end of the course, you’ll be able to better define your information needs, navigate and select the most appropriate products for your application as well as learn how to use the UKCP User Interface.

Please contact us here on the Met Office website and we’ll get you started, please put “UKCP e-learning registration” as the subject. Note that this can take up to 2 working days.

The course will take around 1-2 days, depending in how much detail you explore the supporting material. You can also dip in and out of the eight modules which covers material on getting started with climate change information, understanding uncertainty in UKCP through to putting theory into practice with a number of exercises.

The online training course has been developed as part of Defra’s UKCP Climate Service with contributions from Mott Macdonald, Environment Agency as well as Defra.

 

17 November 2021: Updating the UKCP User Group

Under the Defra funded UKCP Climate Services Project, the Met Office is creating a new user group (UG) to define and develop additional tools as well as share knowledge to empower users to maximise the utility of the existing UK Climate Projections (UKCP). The UG is aimed at people working in the private, public (except central government) or third sector who have a remit on climate change, whether that involves adaptation reporting and management, climate change risk assessment, developing climate services or building awareness to climate change issues. We are also looking for users with a range of experience in using and applying climate information to inform decision making, from beginners to intermediate and advanced users.

If you’re interested in providing information to inform the design of the UG, or participating in the UG as an active memberor would just like to be stay informed about its activities please fill in the short survey by Tuesday 30th November 2021.

Full details of the UG purpose, membership criteria and recruitment process can be found in this linked pdf: “UKCP User Group Information”. We hope to hold the first meeting of the UG in mid-December or January depending on availability of attendees.

 

13 October 2021: Update and Improvements to the UKCP Probabilistic Projections

We previously announced that we found some inconsistencies between the maximum, minimum and mean daily temperature data in the Probabilistic Projections. As part of the continual review and improvement of UKCP data products and services, we are currently updating the UKCP Probabilistic Projections to correct this issue. This update will also include improvements to the statistical treatment of precipitation and decadal variability. For precipitation, the update will lead to improved dry-end extremes.

We plan to release the updated data this winter alongside a technical note and guidance. As in our previous announcement, we remind you that you should not use maximum and minimum surface air temperatures from the UKCP Probabilistic Projections that were released in November 2018. Many other UKCP Products include maximum and minimum daily temperatures. For instance, in the interim you could use the Probabilistic Projections of Climate Extremes that provide future projections of maximum daily temperatures or data from UKCP Regional (12km) or UKCP Local (2.2km). Should you have further queries please contact the UKCP team for further advice.

The inconsistencies mentioned above were found in response to user feedback. Following an extensive investigation, we found a software indexing error in one of our climate model datasets that offsets the seasonal cycle of maximum and minimum temperature data by one month. This problem does not affect daily-average temperature, or other variables in the UKCP Probabilistic Projections. It also does not affect any other UKCP product.

 

22 July 2021: UKCP Local (2.2km) Update 

The UKCP Local (2.2km) data have been updated, following a correction to the computer code identified in September 2020 and some additional science improvements. Top-level climate change messages from UKCP are unchanged because no other UKCP product is affected. For any application, we still recommend considering the full suite of UKCP products. The new Local (2.2km) data generally shows improved consistency with the Regional (12km) data.  

The code error related to how much solid precipitation falls as snow and how much as graupel (small, soft ice pellets that typically form in convective clouds). The science improvements mainly relate to the representation of the snowpack. Full details can be found in the UKCP Local Update Report (available on the Science reports page) and FAQ (available from the Guidance page).  

For this reason, snow is primarily affected, and in turn winter temperature and hourly precipitation extremes. Where these variables have been studied using the Local (2.2km) data, the analysis should be repeated using this new data. Winter mean precipitation and heavy daily precipitation events are affected in present-day climate, but the future changes are not significantly different in the new Local (2.2km) data. There should be little effect on summer temperature, summer mean precipitation and cloud cover.  

To reflect the changes, we have updated the following documentation: 

  • UKCP Headline Findings contains updated statements that are not qualitatively different but the UKCP Local-based numbers have been updated.  

  • UKCP Local (2.2km) Update Report describes the full details of the change and its effects on the data, including figures that update those in the UKCP Local (Convection-Permitting Model) Science Report.  Both are available from the Science Reports and Guidance page

  • UKCP Factsheet on Snow has updated plots and analysis, available from the Factsheet page.  

On fixing the graupel error, the simulation of lightning is considerably improved. Therefore, we are releasing a lightning metric: the number of lightning flashes per day (‘flashrate’). For details, see the updated data availability document (also available from the Science Report and Guidance page).  

 

22 July 2021: FUTURE-DRAINAGE - The first user application of the new UKCP Local (2.2km) projections

Uplifts from the UKRI project FUTURE-DRAINAGE (led by Newcastle University) have been released to coincide with the UKCP Local (2.2km) update. This is the first user application of the new UKCP Local (2.2km) projections, providing new estimates of short-duration precipitation extremes. Results have been tailored to stakeholder needs, to help inform flood management and urban drainage design in a changing climate.

 

October 2020: UKCP Enhancements

A set of enhancements to the available UKCP products are now available; these include an assessment of extremes within the Probabilistic Projections, a low emissions scenario update for UKCP Global (60 km), an assessment of the internal variability within the UKCP Projections, three European circulation indices and data on soil moisture and water balance.   

Increasingly extreme weather is one of the greatest impacts from climate change, the UKCP Probabilistic Projections of Climate Extremes provide information on 21st Century temperature and precipitation extremes across the UK.  They use a similar methodology to the UKCP Probabilistic Projections published in 2018 augmented by the use of extreme value theory to support projections of long return-period events.  The data is available from the UKCP User Interface and the CEDA Archive and described in the following documents: 

UKCP Global (60 km) was one of the products released as part of the UK Climate Projections in 2018, comprising climate model simulations using a high emissions scenario (RCP 8.5). To ensure users can investigate a wider range of scenario uncertainty, the UKCP Global product has been updated to include a low emissions scenario (RCP 2.6). The data is available from the UKCP User Interface and the CEDA Archive and is described in:

An additional set of information is available for those user who wish to explore in more detail the behaviour of the UKCP suite of climate models. This includes three European climate indices, representing the large scale drivers of UK weather and climate within UKCP Global. The data is available from the CEDA Archive and described in the following factsheets:

Soil moisture and water balance metrics are also now available for UKCP Global (60 km) and UKCP Regional (12 km) products on the CEDA Archive. The data is summarised in:

A report that details the role that internal variability of UKCP global climate models:

You can find out more in the press release.

 

24 September 2020: UKCP Updates

Some elements of UKCP will be receiving updates, including a scheduled release of increased functionality, and two amendments fixing errors with the computer code. 

UKCP Local 2.2km correction 

Users of the UKCP Local 2.2km climate model should be aware of an error within the computer code, affecting how much solid precipitation falls as snow and how much falls as small ice pellets. No other UKCP product is affected by the error and top-level UK climate change messages from UKCP are unchanged.  Much of the existing 2.2km data can still be used for many applications, but users are urged not to use data containing projections of snow and winter temperatures over Scotland. 

The following variables are also affected, but to a lesser extent, and for these caution is needed in the use of the existing data: winter precipitation; UK hourly precipitation extremes; and wind extremes over the ocean and north-west coastal regions.  Summer temperature, including extremes and summer mean precipitation remain unaffected. 

The UKCP team are planning to issue revised data in Spring 2021.  A report for technical users providing more detail on this issue and guidance to help users understand how to best continue in their use of the model results is available, along with an FAQ document. 

Probabilistic Projections investigation 

In response to feedback from a user, the UKCP team have checked projections of daily minimum and maximum surface air temperature (Tmin and Tmax) from the probabilistic projections’ component of the land scenarios (UKCP_Probabilistic). In climate model output, changes in daily mean temperature (Tmean) are usually within 0.5 degrees of the average of changes in Tmax and Tmin. However, in the UKCP_Probabilistic data larger differences were found in some of the 3000 realisations, leading to inconsistencies between the Tmax, Tmin and Tmean results. We will report back on a time-scale of approximately one month, with updated data and guidance.  

Any users of the current Tmax and Tmin results from UKCP Probabilistic who need a faster response are advised to contact the UKCP team for further advice. Other variables in UKCP Probabilistic, including daily-average temperature, are not affected by this issue. 

UKCP enhanced capability 

During October 2020, a suite of new tools delivering advanced functionality will become available. The new features include: 

  • Probabilistic estimates for a range of extreme metrics at return periods of 20, 50 and 100 years for quantities such as daily maximum temperature, and daily precipitation.  
  • Storm and weather-related metrics – including NAO indices, storm track position and intensity, and weather types.  
  • Guidance on water budgets and guidance on global model drifts.   


16 September 2019: UKCP Local (2.2km) climate projections now available 

Today, Defra, BEIS, Met Office and the Environment Agency mark the release of the UKCP Local (2.2km) climate projections with an event taking place in London and hosted by Professor Sir Ian Boyd, with a keynote presentation from Professor Christoph Schär.

The new climate projections complement the UKCP suite of products launched last year. They are the highest ever resolution of climate projections produced for the UK, for the first time on a par with the resolution used for weather forecasting. They provide information to help society to understand how much the climate might change in future, enabling comprehensive adaptation planning to inform how to protect people and infrastructure. Read the press release.

The science team behind the projections are confident that the enhanced detail of these cutting-edge projections – when viewed alongside other UKCP products – provides further comprehensive information on future climate change of key importance for local decision-making and planning.


8 April 2019: Probabilistic projections for aggregated regions now available

We’ve added a new dataset to the UK Climate Projections User Interface: the probabilistic projections for aggregated regions. This provides projected changes for not only river basin regions and administrative regions (similar to that available in UKCP09) but also the UK and its devolved administrations.

In producing this new dataset, we made some improvements to the method (see footnote on page 24 of the land projections report). We’ve also made minor changes to the science overview, land projections report and text and figures in the headline findings  to reflect these improvements.

In response to some user queries, we’ve also published a new technical note clarifying characteristics of the probabilistic projections data such as the clipping at the extremes ends of the distributions and non-zero sum of anomalies during the baseline period.

Read our UKCP Newsletters 

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