Gardens and Landscapes by Region

The Defra funded UKCIP (UK Climate Impacts Programme)  offers a range of tools and data to help organisations plan for and respond to the impacts of climate change and to develop adaptation strategies.  One of these tools are the climate change scenarios.

For the UK as a whole, anticipated changes can be divided into temperature, rain and snow, and sea level. See UKCIP08.

The UK is predicted to become warmer with high summer temperatures becoming more frequent and very cold winters becoming increasingly rare. Depending on region, by 2040, the average annual temperature is expected to rise by between 0.5^° and 10^°C and by 2100 by between 1° and 50°C . 

Winters are likely to become wetter and summers drier throughout the UK.  By 2100, there is expected to be up to 30 per cent more precipitation in the winter months and up to 50 per cent less in the summer months, depending on region and emissions scenario.  Snowfall amounts are expected to decrease and heavier winter precipitation to become more frequent. 

Relative sea level will continue to rise around most of the UK’s shoreline and by 2100 it could have risen by as much as 80cm. 

The UKCIP location web pages  show how different climate change scenarios influence temperature and precipitation variables in different areas of the UK. The key climate change impacts and adaptation issues for historic features are considered for a selection of English Heritage properties in each of these regions against these UKCIP scenarios.  Together these 15 properties begin to highlight the range of climate change impacts and cumulative effects that might affect the conservation of historic gardens and landscapes over the next four generations and beyond.