London scoping - ukcip

Final Report
103
Table 6.2 Summer and winter extreme temperatures for London and ‘competitor’ cities
Station Latitude Longitude
Elevation
(metres)
Annual max
Temp. (°C)
London (Heathrow Airport) 51.48N 0.45W 24 30.5 -6.3
Toronto 43.67 79.63W 173 33.1 -24.0
Paris (Orly Airport) 48.73N 2.40E 96 33.4 -8.2
Berlin 52.47N 13.40E 49 33.8 -12.2
Rome 41.80N 12.23E 3 34.4 -3.2
Tokyo 35.55N 139.78E 8 34.4 -2.6
New York (JFK Airport)* 40.65N 73.78W 7 35.3 -14.7
Madrid 40.45N 3.55W 582 38.9 -6.8
* John F Kennedy Airport is within the urban area, but adjacent to the sea so likely to be cooler than
central New York.
Annual min
Temp. (°C)
Most of the competitor cities to London have a higher temperature baseline than London, and
are likely to remain hotter than London in the future due to climate change, though not
necessarily by the same difference as currently. As shown in Table 6.2, London has the coolest
summers of all the cities. Its winters are colder than Rome and Tokyo, though not as cold as
Madrid despite London’s much more northerly location. Toronto is the closest to London in
summer extremes, both cities being slightly cooler than Paris. Toronto has much more extreme
winters than London, however, whilst Paris is only marginally colder than London.
Tokyo and New York are noticeably hotter and more humid than London already. Both cities
are coastally-located and therefore vulnerable to sea-level rise. As the Metro East study
covering New York City expresses it: “Many of the region’s most significant infrastructural
facilities will be at increased risk to damage resulting from augmented storm surges”
(Rosenzweig & Solecki 2001a:7). It is difficult to compare the UKCIP02 scenarios with
existing studies of climate change in New York and Japan because different climate models and
specifications have been employed. Nevertheless, the range of temperature changes for Japan
(0.7 to 3°C for a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 concentration which will occur before 2050,
Nishioka & Harasawa 1998) and for New York (1.4 to 3.6°C by the 2050s and 2.4 to 5.7°C by
the 2080s) (Rosenzweig & Solecki 2001), are reasonably similar to those suggested for London.
Rainfall changes are more difficult to compare, and for New York at least, they vary
significantly with respect to the different climate models used. As for extreme events, New
York experienced major heat waves in the summer of 1999 and in September 1999, Tropical
Storm Floyd brought large-scale flooding in northern New Jersey and southern New York State
(Rosenzweig & Solecki 2001).
6.5 Attractiveness
We propose here to analyse the potential social impacts of climate change upon London by
employing the notion of ‘attractiveness’. Attractiveness is made up of a combination of factors:
economic, lifestyle, socio-cultural, opportunities, cost of living, land availability, and so on.