Targeted investments in climate science could present enormous economic savings for UK and Europe

A press release by Louisa Watts from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and the Walker Institute, Reading (both in the UK): Targeted investments in climate science could lead to major benefits in reducing the costs of adapting to a changing climate, according to new research published by scientists from the UK's National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS). Published in the scientific journal, the Bulletin for the American Meteorological Society, the study shows that investments made now, can lead to as much as 10-20% improvement in climate predictions for the UK and Europe in the coming decades, and up to 20% across the rest of the globe.

This is good news for businesses and policy-makers currently seeking predictions to aid planning for adaptation to climate change in the coming years, and for whom such improvements could present enormous economic savings: uncertainty in climate forecasts means that adaptation measures have to be designed with greater resilience, making them more expensive.

The results came after the researchers, based at the Walker Institute, University of Reading, used data from a suite of state-of-the-art climate models to identify the main causes of uncertainty in predictions of temperature change over different space and time scales. Although this type of study had previously been done on a global scale, this is the first time it has been attempted on regional scales (2000 km) across the globe.

Results showed that for all regions for the next four decades, the main uncertainties in climate predictions are dominated by: (i) differences between the climate models themselves eg in the way they represent different atmospheric processes; (ii) the natural variability of the climate (ie changes in the climate not brought about by human influences). Fortunately, both types of uncertainty are reducible through investment and progress in climate science.

An important issue for planners and funding agencies, therefore, is how climate science can best deliver improvements in such predictions, and so reduce the costs of adaptation to a changing climate…..

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