Urban climate change and climate services (Webinar)

UK Climate Resilience Programme webinar series

16 December 2020, 12.00-13.00

Speakers: Claire Scannell and Lizzie Kendon (Met Office)

Chair: Jason Lowe

See below for links to presentation slides and webinar recordings 

Abstract

Cities are complex and have many interacting systems together with a varied range of actors and decision makers. Cities therefore require novel approaches to delivering climate services which need to be informed by robust and emerging science and data. The UK Climate Projections (UKCP), with recent updates in 2018 (UKCP18) and 2019 (including new Local 2.2km projections), offer a platform on which to enhance the scientific and user understanding of future changes in climate specific to the urban environment.

In this seminar we demonstrate some of the scientific insights gained from this dataset related to urban climate change. We will also demonstrate a range of services being prototyped with city councils across the UK based on a number of UKCP datasets, illustrating the value to city decision makers that such information can provide.

Biographies

Dr Claire Scannell – Met Office Science Manager for Urban Climate Services, UK Applied Science 

Claire has 7 years of experience working across several areas within Applied Science at the Met Office and has built expertise in regional climates, dynamical downscaling, user engagement and co-production of climate services across the world. She currently leads a team of scientists developing novel approaches to urban climate services across timescales and resolutions drawing current and emerging science from the Met Office. Central to this approach is engaging with a variety of urban stakeholders nationally and internationally to co-develop decision relevant urban climate services.

Dr Lizzie Kendon – Met Office Science Fellow and Manager Understanding Regional Climate Change, Met Office Hadley Centre

Lizzie has 15 years of experience working at the Met Office Hadley Centre on regional climate modelling. She leads a team of scientists using very high-resolution (kilometre-scale) models to study climate change, with a focus on gaining a better understanding of extremes and their future change. Her work has been pioneering in the field of convection-permitting climate modelling, with high-profile papers in Nature Climate Change and Nature Comms. (Kendon et al, 2014, 2019a). She recently led work delivering the first national climate scenarios at convection-permitting scale as part of the UK Climate Projections (UKCP) project (Kendon et al, 2019b, 2020).

References:

• Kendon EJ, NM Roberts, HJ Fowler, MJ Roberts, SC Chan and CA Senior (2014) Heavier summer downpours with climate change revealed by weather forecast resolution model, Nature Climate Change, 4, 570-576, doi: 10.1038/NCLIMATE2258
• Kendon EJ, RA Stratton, S Tucker, JH Marsham, S Berthou, DP Rowell and CA Senior (2019a) Enhanced future changes in wet and dry extremes over Africa at convection-permitting scale. Nature Comms. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-09776-9
• Kendon EJ, and et al (2019b) UKCP convection-permitting model projections: Science report. Met Office Tech. Rep., 153 pp
• Kendon EJ, NM Roberts, G Fosser, GM Martin, AP Lock, JM Murphy, CA Senior and SO Tucker (2020) Greater future UK winter precipitation increase in new convection-permitting scenarios. J Climate. DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0089.1