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. The UK Climate Projections 2009 UKCP09 report was released in June by Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

For the UK as a whole, anticipated changes can be divided into temperature, rain and snow, and sea level. See UKCP09.

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 2080, the average summer temperature is expected to rise more than 4°C with urban areas such as London regularly reaching over 40°C. 

Winters are likely to become warmer and wetter with summers becoming drier throughout the UK. By 2080, there is expected to be up to 30 per cent more precipitation in the winter months and up to 25 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 2080 it could have risen by as much as 36cm (14in). This is likely to flood low-lying coastal areas.

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.