The Met Office has commissioned new research as part of the SPF UK Climate Resilience programme, which is jointly led by UKRI and the Met Office. The new projects and the organisations delivering them are:
- Development and provision of UK socioeconomic scenarios for climate vulnerability, impact, adaptation and services research and policy Cambridge Econometrics (with UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) and the Universities of Exeter and Edinburgh) £500,000.
- Risk estimates using techniques from catastrophe modelling: UK Flood, Sayers and Partners (with UK CEH, Vivid Economics, Loughborough University) £250,000.
- Demonstration of a climate service to address the resilience needs of the UK health sector University of Reading
- Climate Service prototype development: enhancing the resilience of the water sector to drought events UK CEH (with British Geological Survey and HR Wallingford) £299,000.
- Review of climate resilience mainstreaming into regulatory and voluntary standards, national guidance, and other sectorial/industry codes of practice, JBA Consulting Ltd (with John Dora Consulting Limited, TRIOSS, University of Leeds, British Standards Institute) £54,000.
Professor Jason Lowe, Met Office science lead on the UKCR programme said “New work bringing together climate science and catastrophe modelling, which has traditionally been used in the insurance sector, has the potential to provide brand new insights about climate risk and the damage from weather extremes in future decades. Ultimately it will enable organisations in the UK to better plan how to become climate resilient”. Professor Lowe added, “The new projects looking at how to use the latest climate information to make decisions in sectors such as flooding, health and water resources will help us understand how to make better use of climate data in the real world.”
Professor Suraje Dessai, one of the SPF UK Climate Resilience champions said, “The work to produce new socio-economic scenarios is urgently needed. It will provide a vital ingredient for researchers and practitioners to undertake comprehensive climate risk assessments that includes both changes in society and climate in the UK.”
Dr Kate Lonsdale, the other UKRI UK Climate Resilience champions said, ‘I am pleased to see the work being done on updating standards and industry codes of practice. When these change big shifts in practice can happen that will help to build our resilience to a changing climate’.