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Application for Research Ethics Committee (REC) approval and the conduct of medical research is paper intensive. This retrospective study examined all applications to a single REC in the south of England over one year. It estimated the mass of paper used, comparing the proportional paper consumption of different trial types and during different stages of the research process, quantifying the consumption in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. In 2009, 68 trials were submitted to the REC. Total paper consumption for the REC process and study conduct was 176,150 sheets of A4 paper (879 kg), equivalent to an estimated 11.5 million sheets (88 tonnes, 2,100 trees) a year for the UK; the REC process accounted for 26.4%. REC applications and the conduct of approved trials generate considerable environmental impact through paper consumption contributing to the NHS's carbon footprint. Paper use might be reduced through the implementation of digital technologies and revised research methods, namely changing attitudes in both researchers and ethics committees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article charts the successes and failures of urban regeneration policies in the UK. Aspects of both continuity and change in the direction and implementation of urban policy are explored. It is argued that while New Labour's approach since 1997 has been distinctive and, in some respects, innovative, especially in relation to community engagement, it has continued to adopt a flawed conceptualisation of the urban problem which has led to a limited policy response. That legacy is likely to have a continuing influence on policy. Looking ahead, new challenges need to be faced, notably economic recession and climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture is a major source of global greenhouse gas emissions and therefore effective policy interventions are required in order to mitigate these emissions. One form of intervention used within the agricultural sector is participatory extension programmes (PEPs). PEPs are advisory programmes based on voluntary participation where farmers, researchers, and rural experts collectively learn by sharing information and experiences. To evaluate the contribution of these programmes towards more climate friendly farming, this paper conducts an ex-post evaluation of a PEP focused on the voluntary uptake of on-farm emissions mitigation practices in the UK. We use a mixed-methods approach to understand both the adoption of new practices and a range of human-social outcomes such as social learning, resilience and improved decision-making. We find that participants in the PEP show a higher level of practice adoption compared to non-participants. However, the evaluation of the human-social indicators shows that the change cannot always be attributed to PEP participation. The paper contributes to the current literature by conducting the first evaluation on a climate change PEP in a developed country and by developing and applying an effective evaluation framework for climate change PEPs, in order to achieve an understanding of the change achieved by PEPs. • Understanding change due to PEP participation requires a mixed methods approach. • Holistic evaluation shows increased practice adoption cannot always be attributed to the PEP. • A wider set of measures is required to achieve a sustained change towards climate friendly farming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate projections suggest that the UK will be increasingly affected by climate-induced hazards in the future, exacerbating the potential for multihazard events to occur. This paper explores the extent to which climate resilience is being embedded in current and future rail transport infrastructure projects in London through use of a multihazard approach. It concludes that a multihazard approach is a relatively new concept and is therefore not currently being considered widely. However, opportunities for decision makers to explore its value to mitigate climate risks through collaborative working and further research exist – this paper recommends that two main stages are required to achieve this. Route 1 requires climate/hazard experts to identify and characterise the different hazard interactions that could occur, including their impact on the UK/London. Following this, route 2 involves the creation of multidisciplinary workshops to identify any multihazard vulnerabilities associated with different rail assets – potentially highlighting areas where further research is required. The paper concludes that although a London rail context has been adopted in order to understand the relevance of a multihazard approach, there is opportunity for it to be considered across many different sectors in the UK and the wider civil engineering industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a growing focus on uncertainty as a distinct concept in the risk literature. This paper is concerned with how those involved in the design and implementation of climate change policy conceptualize risk and uncertainty. Based on interviews with policy and industry elites in Australia, China and the UK, it finds that participants did not distinguish between "risk" and "uncertainty" in their conceptualization of climate threats. For the majority of them, politics was the most significant source of risk and uncertainty in climate policy, but delegation of otherwise political decisions to the market was seen as the best solution. The conclusion suggests that the conceptual distinction between risk and uncertainty is less important, for policy and industry elites, than the need to develop mechanisms that account for both persistent scientific uncertainties as well as interpretive and moral ambiguities in climate policy design and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International assessments of evidence on climate change (e.g. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC) or national climate change risk assessments (e.g. UK Climate Change Risk Assessment, CCRA) do not offer a sufficiently granular perspective on climate impacts to adequately inform governance of resilience to climate risks at the local level. Using an analysis of UK decision-makers managing and responding to heatwaves and flood risks, this paper argues how more robust local evidence is needed to inform decision-making regarding adaptation options for enhancing local resilience. We identify evidence gaps and issues relating to local climate change impacts, including sources and quality of evidence used, adequacy and accessibility of evidence available, ill-communicated evidence and conflicting or misused evidence. A lack of appreciation regarding how scientific evidence and personal judgement can mutually enhance the quality of decision-making underpins all of these gaps. Additionally, we find that the majority of evidence currently used is reductively based upon socio-economic and physical characteristics of climate risks. We argue that a step change is needed in local climate resilience that moves beyond current physical and socio-economic risk characterisation to a more inclusive co-constitution of social and politically defined climate risks at the local scale that are better aligned with the local impacts felt and needs of stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to probe into the social media use by Chinese climate journalists through the examination of their professional practices on social media. Taking COP21 as a case, the study conducted a survey from Chinese COP21 journalists and analyzed WeChat and Weibo posts from Chinese journalists and tweets from their UK and US colleagues. The results show the prevalent use of WeChat among Chinese journalists and the personalization of the social media content accordingly. Compared to their Western counterparts, the use of social media for professional purposes by Chinese COP21 journalists was relatively limited. Nevertheless, several patterns of using social media were identified. Specifically, Chinese journalists tended to more frequently express personal opinions, discuss work experience and favor conventional news sources of authority than UK and US journalists. The results also suggest that climate change in Chinese media discourse will remain more a policy-related issue instead of an environmental or scientific issue, with Chinese government playing a central role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Analyse the impact of climate change on road transport systems. • Develop a risk prediction tool to reduce climate impact on roads. • Conduct economic analysis of various measures to reduce climate impact on roads. • Conduct an empirical study to provide useful insights for rational risk based climate adaptation. This paper aims to analyse the impacts of climate change to the current and predicted future situations of road transportation in the UK and evaluate the corresponding adaptation plans to cope with them. A conceptual framework of long-term adaptation planning for climate change in road systems is proposed to ensure the resilience and sustainability of road transport systems under various climate risks such as flooding and increased temperature. To do so, an advanced Fuzzy Bayesian Reasoning (FBR) model is first employed to evaluate the climate risks in the UK road transport networks. This modelling approach can tackle the high uncertainty in risk data and thus facilitate the development of the climate adaptation framework and its application in the UK road sector. To examine the feasibility of this model, a nationwide survey is conducted among the stakeholders to analyse the climate risks, in terms of the timeframe of climate threats, the likelihood of occurrence, the severity of consequences, and infrastructure resilience. From the modelling perspective, this work brings novelty by expanding the risk attribute "the severity of consequence" into three sub-attributes including economic loss, damage to the environment, and injuries and/or loss of life. It advances the-state-of-the-art technique in the current relevant literature from a single to multiple tier climate risk modelling structure. Secondly, an Evidential Reasoning (ER) approach is used to prioritise the best adaptation measure(s) by considering both the risk analysis results from the FBR and the implementation costs simultaneously. The main new contributions of this part lie in the rich raw data collected from the real world to provide useful practical insights for achieving road resilience when facing increasing climate risk challenges. During this process, a qualitative analysis of several national reports regarding the impacts posed by climate change, risk assessment and adaptation measures in the UK road sector is conducted for the relevant decision data (i.e. risk and cost). It is also supplemented by an in-depth interview with a senior planner from Highways England. The findings provide road planners and decision makers with useful insights on identification and prioritisation of climate threats as well as selection of cost-effective climate adaptation measures to rationalise adaptation planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in the impacts of climate change is ever increasing. This is particularly true of the water sector where understanding potential changes in the occurrence of both floods and droughts is important for strategic planning. Climate variability has been shown to have a significant impact on UK climate and accounting for this in future climate change projections is essential to fully anticipate potential future impacts. In this paper a new resampling methodology is developed which includes the variability of both baseline and future precipitation. The resampling methodology is applied to 13 CMIP3 climate models for the 2080s, resulting in an ensemble of monthly precipitation change factors. The change factors are applied to the Eden catchment in eastern Scotland with analysis undertaken for the sensitivity of future river flows to the changes in precipitation. Climate variability is shown to influence the magnitude and direction of change of both precipitation and in turn river flow, which are not apparent without the use of the resampling methodology. The transformation of precipitation changes to river flow changes display a degree of non-linearity due to the catchment's role in buffering the response. The resampling methodology developed in this paper provides a new technique for creating climate change scenarios which incorporate the important issue of climate variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first part of this paper demonstrated the existence of bias in GCM-derived precipitation series, downscaled using either a statistical technique (here the Statistical Downscaling Model) or dynamical method (here high resolution Regional Climate Model HadRM3) propagating to river flow estimated by a lumped hydrological model. This paper uses the same models and methods for a future time horizon (2080s) and analyses how significant these projected changes are compared to baseline natural variability in four British catchments. The UKCIP02 scenarios, which are widely used in the UK for climate change impact, are also considered. Results show that GCMs are the largest source of uncertainty in future flows. Uncertainties from downscaling techniques and emission scenarios are of similar magnitude, and generally smaller than GCM uncertainty. For catchments where hydrological modelling uncertainty is smaller than GCM variability for baseline flow, this uncertainty can be ignored for future projections, but might be significant otherwise. Predicted changes are not always significant compared to baseline variability, less than 50% of projections suggesting a significant change in monthly flow. Insignificant changes could occur due to climate variability alone and thus cannot be attributed to climate change, but are often ignored in climate change studies and could lead to misleading conclusions. Existing systematic bias in reproducing current climate does impact future projections and must, therefore, be considered when interpreting results. Changes in river flow variability, important for water management planning, can be easily assessed from simple resampling techniques applied to both baseline and future time horizons. Assessing future climate and its potential implication for river flows is a key challenge facing water resource planners. This two-part paper demonstrates that uncertainty due to hydrological and climate modelling must and can be accounted for to provide sound, scientifically-based advice to decision makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This paper aims to argue that to address the consequences of climate change and variability a greater focus on pre-emergency planning that engages a wider stakeholder group must be adopted. Design/methodology/approach - The paper discusses UK emergency management and approaches to climate change and climate variability risk. Findings - The internal focus of UK emergency management inhibits the contribution that it can make to societal resilience and public preparedness. Effective risk reduction requires that all actors, including the public, are engaged in the social learning process. From a UK emergency management perspective this requires a culture shift to an outward proactive focus. Originality/value - This paper offers insights into emergency preparedness in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the conclusion of the Stern Review that the cost of climate change could be as much as 20% of the global GDP. In this paper, I identify two major sources of variation in the estimates of the aggregate cost of climate change. One is the disagreement among the AOGCM models on the magnitude of climate change, and the other is the divergence among the economic models on how harmful these changes will be to the economy. The main conclusion of this paper is that only under the alarmist approach—which assumes both the most severe climate change and the most extreme estimate of climate change damage to the economy—we can be convinced that the cost of climate change is close to 20% of the global GDP in 2100. In most other cases, the cost will be under 1% of the global GDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is a major issue for all levels of government, global, national and local. Local authorities' responses to climate change have tended to concentrate on their role in reducing greenhouse gases. However, the scientific consensus is that we also need to adapt to unavoidable climate change. Spatial planning at a local level has a critical anticipatory role to play in promoting robust adaptation. This paper reviews the shift in local authorities' planning policies for climate change adaptation in the UK since 2000, and provides evidence of underlying attitudes amongst planning professionals to climate change. It shows that, while the issue of climate change is becoming recognized with respect to flood risk, the wider implications (for instance, for biodiversity and water resources) are not yet integrated into plans. The reasons for this lie in lack of political support and lack of engagement of the planning profession with climate change networks. But the paper also argues there are difficulties in acknowledging the need for adaptation at the local level, with the short-term horizons of local plans at odds with perceptions of the long-term implications of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the skepticism in climate. This paper features the report of Sir Nicholas Stern to the United Kingdom's Chancellor of the Exchequer and to the Prime Minister. The report is based on a lecture entitled "What is the Economics of Climate Change," which was part of a lecture series. It discusses the skeptisms about the climate change as pointed by Stern and his team. The scientific aspects are reviewed as well as the uncertainties. The debates are briefly featured in this paper.

Climate risk management is a new and evolving area and many decisions are likely to be affected by climate risks over the long-form. This paper presents a decision-making framework designed for managing climate alongside non-climate risk factors. The framework describes a process that should help identify and manage these risks. It can be used to help decision-makers answer questions about whether adaptation is required, and, if so, which measures should be implemented. Adaptive management is recommended as a useful approach for dealing with climate and other uncertainties. This paper describes an application of the framework to a wafer resources case study. Feedback from training workshops based on four different case studies suggests the framework provides of minimum a useful (post-hoc) decision analysis tool. Potential users, who include planners, consultants and policy-makers have been largely positive about the prospective utility of the framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to understand why climate information is produced differently from country to country. To do this, we critically examined and compared the social and scientific values that shaped the production of three national climate scenarios in the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK. A comparative analysis of documentary materials and expert interviews linked to the climate scenarios was performed. Our findings reveal a new typology of use-inspired research in climate science for decision-making: (i) innovators, where the advancement of science is the main objective; (ii) consolidators, where knowledge exchanges and networks are prioritised; and (iii) collaborators, where the needs of users are put first and foremost. These different values over what constitutes 'good' science for decision-making are mirrored in the way users were involved in the production process: (i) elicitation, where scientists have privileged decision-making power; (ii) representation, where multiple organisations mediate on behalf of individual users; and (iii) participation, where a multitude of users interact with scientists in an equal partnership. These differences help explain why climate knowledge gains its credibility and legitimacy differently even when the information itself might not be judged as salient and usable. If the push to deliberately co-produce climate knowledge is not sensitive to the national civic epistemology at play in each country, scientist-user interactions may fail to deliver more 'usable' climate information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Water companies in the United Kingdom have considered climate change in their water resources plans for more than a decade through studies funded by UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR). This paper presents an initial assessment of the impact of the UK Climate Projections 2009 (UKCP09) on river flows at a national scale for the 2020s under the A1B scenario and the implications for water resource planning. A daily hydrological modelling framework based on two conceptual model structures and the Generalized Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation (GLUE) methodology has been applied to 70 catchments across the UK. A Latin Hypercube Sampling approach was adopted to handle the probabilistic nature of UKCP09. Results show a decrease in mean annual flow over most of the UK, with negative median values of all monthly changes except in winter over the western and northern mountainous areas. Furthermore the results indicate a high likelihood of a significant decline in summer flows. An analysis of variance shows that the main uncertainty in river flow changes comes from the spread in climate projections. Finally results are found to be consistent with a previous UKWIR assessment based on individual projections from 6 Global Climate Models (GCMs) under the A2 scenario. The reduction in summer low-flows, critical for water resources, appears however more limited with UKCP09. Although most expected changes are within natural variability, the drier conditions overall and the greater spread of results with respect to previous assessments indicates a need for testing the robustness of water resource plans. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The greatest attention to the UK wind climatology has focused upon mean windspeeds, despite a knowledge of gust speeds being essential to a variety of users. This paper goes some way to redressing this imbalance by analysing observed daily maximum gust speeds from a 43-station network over the period 1980–2005. Complementing these data are dynamically downscaled reanalysis data, generated using the PRECIS Regional Climate Modelling system, for the period 1959–2001. Inter-annual variations in both the observed and downscaled reanalysis gust speeds are presented, with a statistically significant (at the 95% confidence interval) 5% increase across the network in daily maximum gust speeds between 1959 and the early 1990s, followed by an apparent decrease. The benefit of incorporating dynamically downscaled reanalysis data is revealed by the fact that the decrease in gust speeds since 1993 may be placed in the context of a very slight increase displayed over the longer 1959–2001 period. Furthermore, the severity of individual windstorm events is considered, with high profile recent events placed into the context of the long term record. A daily cycle is identified from the station observations in the timing of the daily maximum gust speeds, with an afternoon peak occurring between 12:00–15:00, exhibiting spatial and intra-annual variations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The relevance of climate change for society seems indisputable: scientific evidence points to a significant human contribution in causing climate change, and impacts which will increasingly affect human welfare. In order to meet national and international greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets, there is an urgent need to understand and enable societal engagement in mitigation. Yet recent research indicates that this involvement is currently limited: although awareness of climate change is widespread, understanding and behavioral engagement are far lower. Proposals for mitigative ‘personal carbon budgets’ imply a need for public understanding of the causes and consequences of carbon emissions, as well as the ability to reduce emissions. However, little has been done to consider the situated meanings of carbon and energy in everyday life and decisions. This paper builds on the concept of ‘carbon capability’, a term which captures the contextual meanings associated with carbon and individuals’ abilities and motivations to reduce emissions. We present empirical findings from a UK survey of public engagement with climate change and carbon capability, focusing on both individual and institutional dimensions. These findings highlight the diverse public understandings about ‘carbon’, encompassing technical, social, and moral discourses; and provide further evidence for the environmental value-action gap in relation to adoption of low-carbon lifestyles. Implications of these findings for promoting public engagement with climate change and carbon capability are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper investigates whether and to what extent a wide range of actors in the UK are adapting to climate change, and whether this is evidence of a social transition. We document evidence of over 300 examples of early adopters of adaptation practice to climate change in the UK. These examples span a range of activities from small adjustments (or coping), to building adaptive capacity, to implementing actions and to creating deeper systemic change in public and private organisations in a range of sectors. We find that adaptation in the UK has been dominated by government initiatives and has principally occurred in the form of research into climate change impacts. These government initiatives have stimulated a further set of actions at other scales in public agencies, regulatory agencies and regional government (and the devolved administrations), though with little real evidence of climate change adaptation initiatives trickling down to local government level. The sectors requiring significant investment in large scale infrastructure have invested more heavily than those that do not in identifying potential impacts and adaptations. Thus we find a higher level of adaptation activity by the water supply and flood defence sectors. Sectors that are not dependent on large scale infrastructure appear to be investing far less effort and resources in preparing for climate change. We conclude that the UK government-driven top-down targeted adaptation approach has generated anticipatory action at low cost in some areas. We also conclude that these actions may have created enough niche activities to allow for diffusion of new adaptation practices in response to real or perceived climate change. These results have significant implications for how climate policy can be developed to support autonomous adaptors in the UK and other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The idea of climate has both statistical and social foundations. Both of these dimensions of climate change over time: climate, as defined by meteorological statistics, changes for both natural and anthropogenic reasons; and our expectations of future climate also change, as cultures, societies and knowledge evolves. This paper explores the interactions between these different expressions of climate change by focusing on the idea of ‘normal’ climates defined by statistics. We show how this idea came into being in meteorological circles and then review how this idea of climatic normality gets entangled with cultural and psychological processes. Using data from historical and predicted climates in the UK, we illustrate the significance of choosing different baseline ‘normals’ for retrospective and prospective interpretations of climate change. Since the choice of these statistical ‘normals’ reflects cultural, political and psychological preferences and practices as much as scientific ones, we argue that expectations of the climatic future are influenced by social as well as statistical norms. Seeing climate as co-constructed between the psycho-cultural constraints of society and the physical constraints of the material world offers a different way of thinking about the instabilities of climate and the ways we adapt to them. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A meta-modelling approach has been adopted to link simulations of low and high water flows with simulations of suitable climate space for a selection of fen and bog species with differing drought and flood tolerance. The linked meta-models were used to examine the impacts of socio-economic and climate change scenarios on wetlands in two contrasting regions of the UK. The hydrological model shows that low and high flows are sensitive to climate change and to the regional distribution of abstractions and discharges. Where there are large changes in urbanisation, flows are more sensitive to socio-economic change. The changes in high flows have little impact on the species selected, but changes in low flows result in a number of areas becoming marginal or unsuitable due to dryness. At the regional scale, adaptation options appear to be limited and mostly involve, for surface water-influenced wetlands, increased water imports (either directly through increased non-consumptive water demand or indirectly through river augmentation), which may not be consistent with the socio-economic scenario or be feasible. This paper shows, therefore, that changes in hydrological regime are important for the future of wetlands and that these may depend as much on the future socio-economic situation as the projected changes in climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transport sector is consistently responsible for around 30 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions in developed countries and is one of few sectors where emissions continue to increase as a result of apparently insatiable demand for road and air travel. This paper examines how the formulation of transport policy fits into the exposition of UK climate policy, focusing on three principal areas of tension: policy priority (congestion and carbon reduction); strategies to reduce emissions (technological and behavioural solutions) and timescale (short- and long-term vision). We suggest that in overcoming such tensions government ministers will need to devolve significant policy formulation and implementation powers to an appropriate scale of governance – in this case the city-region – to fashion a ‘convergence space’ capable of promoting meaningful action with regard to transport's climate impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pressure to prove that anthropogenic global warming is real, and happening now has become so strong, that in spite of major and irresolvable uncertainties in climate models, there is a daily renewal and re-inforcement of the idea of scientific certainty in the mainstream media. Whilst uncertainties are often acknowledged in the body of scientific reports, they are rarely seen in press releases and executive summaries. This paper examines how an almost mass acceptance of imminent and potentially catastrophic global warming by politicians, the media and the public, has come about and highlights the role of various UK agencies such as the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and the Met Office in producing this result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2004, the UK government published advice to planning authorities on ways in which the planning system might respond to climate change. This paper provides an account of the process of the formulation of that advice and the subsequent policy guidance, analysing the tensions revealed and offering an explanation of why the process took some time. It argues that the story can be understood in institutionalist terms, which recognize the different perspectives of planning policy communities and climate change policy communities. The decision to publish advice provided a policy arena in which these different interests sought to influence the agenda, employing competing policy discourses of discretionary enablement and more urgent prescription. These discourses partly reflected different approaches to the role of government, but also revealed the complexities of climate change as a new and uncharted issue facing the planning system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Drawing on results of a 2003 survey of environmental officers in every Local Authority (LA) in England and Wales, this paper assesses the reception and response of local government to the information being provided through the UK Climate Change Programme. Over three quarters of respondents () felt they did not have access to the best information about the impacts of climate change on their areas. Although up-to-date information is freely available from a number of official Government sources, those official sources are not consulted as consistently as the media or as intensively as the internet, despite being consistently regarded as much more accurate, credible, and appropriate to LA needs. We interpret this apparent contradiction between LA officer confidence in official sources and their relatively infrequent use as a consequence, first, of technical–cognitive and practical–temporal difficulties accessing and understanding official sources of climate change information and, second, of concerns about the practical relevance of that information for the administrative functions of local government and thus for any meaningful response by LAs to climate change. Our survey recorded considerable levels of stress, cynicism, and futility among LA officials that not only complicate communication efforts but also call into question the central assumption of the UK Climate Change Programme that simply making more locally specific information about climate change impacts available will motivate appropriate action. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Considerable attention has been given to the impact of climate change on avian populations over the last decade. In this paper we examine two issues with respect to coastal bird populations in the UK: (1) is there any evidence that current populations are declining due to climate change, and (2) how might we predict the response of populations in the future? We review the cause of population decline in two species associated with saltmarsh habitats. The abundance of Common RedshankTringa totanusbreeding on saltmarsh declined by about 23% between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, but the decline appears to have been caused by an increase in grazing pressure. The number of TwiteCarduelis flavirostriswintering on the coast of East Anglia has declined dramatically over recent decades; there is evidence linking this decline with habitat loss but a causal role for climate change is unclear. These examples illustrate that climate change could be having population-level impacts now, but also show that it is dangerous to become too narrowly focused on single issues affecting coastal birds. Making predictions about how populations might respond to future climate change depends on an adequate understanding of important ecological processes at an appropriate spatial scale. We illustrate this with recent work conducted on the Icelandic population of Black-tailed GodwitsLimosa limosa islandicathat shows large-scale regulatory processes. Most predictive models to date have focused on local populations (single estuary or a group of neighbouring estuaries). We discuss the role such models might play in risk assessment, and the need for them to be linked to larger-scale ecological processes. We argue that future work needs to focus on spatial scale issues and on linking physical models of coastal environments with important ecological processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current climate projections suggest that the UK will experience warmer and wetter winters and warmer and dryer summers. This change in the climate could affect the incidence or severity of microbiological attack on exposed timber and have significant impact on buildings and construction. One method of assessing the geographical climate based hazard is to use the Scheffer Climate index, which relates temperature and rain variables. There was a considerable increase in the Scheffer climate indices for various locations of the UK from 1990 to 2019. The highest index values are seen in the Northern and western areas of the United Kingdom, but increases are seen across the country. The paper also uses representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios to project future climate decay indices for the United Kingdom until the end of the twenty-first century. The projections show an increase in the Scheffer index even in the lowest RCP scenario, with indices in all regions of the UK increasing to indicate very high hazard of decay. The major implication is that to ensure serviceability of wood and wooden structures exposed to the environment the use of good design, durable woods and properly treated or modified woods will be paramount. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1. Hydrologically open lakes in temperate regions are not considered as sensitive to climate change as closed-basin lakes in semiarid regions. 2. Oak Mere is an acid lake in lowland UK. It has no surface inflow or outflow but is connected to the regional groundwater. It is a high landscape, hydrologically open lake. 3. This paper describes how Oak Mere responded to drought with rapid and substantial changes in acidity and nutrients. Decreases in pH and catchment-derived nutrients appear to be a response to the relative amount of catchment-derived minerals compared with those received in direct precipitation. 4. The extreme sensitivity of the site appears to be due to negligible groundwater inputs, low buffering capacity and a short retention time. 5. The paper demonstrates that high landscape sites may represent the most sensitive hydrologically open lakes to climate change. This not only has consequences for acidification and eutrophication studies. These sites may also be considered valuable in that they potentially offer an important new archive for palaeoclimate studies, with a sensitivity previously considered unavailable in low altitude temperate regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyses of the impacts of future anthropogenic climate change on environmental and social systems have been dominated by a 'top-down' approach. A climate change scenario is defined using output from one ormore climate model experiments, the scenario is run through one or more environmental simulation models, and the impacts of the prescribed climate change evaluated. This approach places a considerable burden on the selection of which climate change scenarios should drive theimpacts assessment. An alternative approach for assessing possible impacts of climate change follows a 'bottom-up' (or inverse modeling) approach. Here, the sequence of analysis steps is inverted. An assessment is made of what range of magnitudes and/or rates of regional climate change could be adapted to by an environmental or social exposure unit. The question is then asked of the climate scenario developer,how likely is it that future regional climate change will exceed these limits, and by when? Under what scenario or modeling assumptions will these limits be exceeded? And how do these future changes relate to current climate variability? In this paper we present a systematicapproach for considering the effect of a set of scenario and modeling uncertainties on the likelihood of critical climate change being exceeded for particular exposure units. We present this assessment in the context of observed climate change over the last 100 yr and illustrate the approach for the UK and for 2 thresholds of climate change. These are defined, very simplistically, in terms of summer mean temperature and rainfall and as such may nominally be regarded as relatingto water resources in the UK. We argue that one of the strongest advantages of this approach is that it disarms those who wield climate change scenarios as though they were in some sense 'predictions' of future climate. By visualizing the effects on realised future climate of different modeling assumptions and scenario uncertainties, we make more [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]