Scottish Road Network Climate Change Study: UKCP09 update

Description

In the UK, the Met Office is providing transport stakeholders with probabilistic projections (Murphy et al., 2009). The United Kingdom Climate Projections 2009 (UKCP09) provide climate information for the UK, designed to help those needing to plan how they will adapt to a changing climate. UKCP09 is the fifth generation of climate change information for the UK, with projections based on a methodology designed by the Met Office. For the first time, the projections are probabilistic, meaning that the representation of uncertainty is more comprehensive than in previous projections.

A user interface is also available, to facilitate user assessment of the available information. UKCP09 has been prepared to assist a variety of users across different sectors to address particular climate change adaptation issues, and explore a range of different risk appetites and planning scenarios.

The new projections were used by the Scottish Government (through Transport Scotland) to revise and update the conclusions and the recommendations of the assessement study, completed in 2005, on the potential trends in climate change in Scotland and how these could affect the road network. This initial study had made 28 recommendations for four types of issue: design, operational, research and policy. These were also classified as priority recommendations, other recommendations (short-term issues), or other recommendations (long-term issues).

The new study, launched in 2011 and published in February 2012, investigated a range of relevant climatic variables (mean, high and low temperatures; rainfall totals and extremes; soil moisture/groundwater; sea level rise), and provided ranges in projected changes, instead of just single values as the previous study, so that an indication of uncertainty was also given.Overall, trends in projected changes in climatic variables were found to remain generally consistent with the 2005 study’s findings. Hence, the understanding of the general picture of climate change and its likely effects on the design, operation and maintenance of the Scottish trunk road network was found not to have significantly altered. Therefore, it was concluded that the 28 recommendations made in the 2005 study continue to represent a reasonable response to the predicted changes in the climate.

The existence of probabilistic information was highlighted as valuable for adaptation planning, and continuing review of adaptation priorities in the light of new information was recommended.

Reference information