Patterns of climate change across Scotland: technical report - Sniffer

SNIFFER Project CC03: Patterns of Climate Change across Scotland April 2006
(Appendices)
1. INTRODUCTION
There is an increasing body of evidence, which shows that the climate of our planet is
changing. Long records of observed data exist for specific locations however combining
these separate records into gridded data sets is a relatively new innovation exploiting
advanced spatial averaging techniques. Using such datasets to validate climate model
simulations of observed climate has enabled scientists to say, with some level of confidence,
that the changes which have been observed cannot be due to natural forcing alone and that
man’s actions are contributing to global warming (IPCC, 2001). More recently it has become
possible to say that regional patterns of change are also being influenced by man’s actions
(Stott et al, 2003).
In 2002 the UK Climate Impacts Programme published the latest set of Climate Change
Scenarios for the United Kingdom (UKCIP02, Hulme et al, 2002). The climate model results
contained within this report were from the Met Office’s Hadley Centre, based upon findings
from the latest regional climate model HadRM3. his model was run for a ‘baseline’ period in
order to represent present day climate, where present day climate was taken to be an
average over the thirty-year period 1961 to 1990. In addition to the model representation of
present day climate and the scenarios of future change, a database of gridded observed
variables was constructed (See Hulme et al, Appendix 7).
In recent years there have been a number of weather related events that have been linked in
the media to climate change. While it is not possible to say whether any individual event is
due to climate change it is possible to draw comparisons between current weather and how
weather may be expected to change in the future. For example, the heat wave that impacted
much of Europe in 2003 cannot, as a single event, be attributed to climate change. The
temperatures reached are however comparable with the scenarios of an average summer by
the middle of this century.
There now exists a sometimes bewildering array of information relating to both the changes
already observed in our climate and those which may be expected in the future. Figures of
temperature change, either observed or projected, are often presented as average values on
a global or national scale. There is no simple way for an individual in Scotland to find out
what global warming and climate change mean in their region. The aim of this project is to
address this need and to set a marker in time against which future changes may be
examined. Therefore, we seek to collate readily available data in order to identify trends in
the observed weather of Scotland and then to compare these with expected changes in
future climate.
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