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Responsibility for mitigation policy is a devolved matter. As such, each country develops its own policies and reports to its own ministers to respond to the challenges presented by a changing climate. For more information, go to the relevant websites of the Devolved Administrations of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Climate change is not something that will be happening somewhere else. There will be impacts for the UK. We will see hotter, drier summers and warmer wetter winters, coupled with increased frequency of extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts, heavy rain and floods. The 2003 heat wave resulted in over 2000 premature deaths in the summer in the UK. The 2007 floods caused damage and disruption which we can all remember. With climate change, such events will occur more frequently. So climate change is an important issue for the UK; it is not something we can ignore.

Cutting carbon emissions remains a priority, but we need to adapt as well, because climate change is already happening. Past greenhouse gas emissions mean we are already committed to at least 30 years of temperature rise and 100+ years of sea-level rise, so all of us – individuals, businesses, Government and public authorities – will also need to adapt our behaviour to respond to the challenges of climate change.

Even if we drastically cut our greenhouse emissions now, past emissions mean that some climate change is inevitable, so we need to adapt the way we live and work to cope with a future that involves hotter, drier summers, warmer wetter winters and increased frequency of severe weather events such as heat waves, droughts and floods. Making timely and proportionate changes to how we do things, to make sure that our investments, such as housing and energy infrastructure, last for as long as they possibly can makes good sense – effective decisions now can save money in the long-run. UKCP09 is the latest cutting edge science and is the best tool yet to help us plan and prepare for a future with climate change.

Producing the Projections cost about £11 million in total, paid out of Defra's and DECC's research budgets.

No, UKCP09 is free to use. The information will be presented in various ways, to suit people's needs. Key findings and pre-prepared maps and graphs will help everybody understand the key messages about how our climate will change. Technical tools will then help decision-makers and researchers get to the greater level of detail that they need. The guidance provided on the UKCP09 technical site will help people to make the right decision about how the information can help them, and how to get the best from it.

The UK Climate Projections show the probability of different outcomes of change, where the probability is based strength of evidence for different outcomes using a particular methodology. The Projections on their own are not a planning tool. But, combined with other information on other issues, they help make effective long-term plans.

The probabilistic projections in UKCP09 are designed to express averages over 30-year periods, starting with the period 2010–2039 (the 2020s); they do not look at year to year variability within these time periods.

It is difficult to provide information from a climate model on climate change in the near term (the next few years). Climate models cannot accurately do this because much of what will happen is heavily dominated by year-to-year variability: so even though the trend in the climate over a 30-year period is one of warming, there can be, for example, cold winters and dull summers, perhaps for several years in a row.

The interpretation of probability generally falls into two broad categories. The first type of probability relates to the expected frequency of occurrence of some outcome, over a large number of independent trials carried out under the same conditions: for example the chance of getting a five (or any other number) when rolling a dice is 1 in 6, that is, a probability of about 17%. This is not the meaning of the probabilities supplied in UKCP09, as there can only be one pathway of future climate. In UKCP09, we use the second type where probability is a measure of the degree to which a particular level of future climate change is consistent with the information used in the analysis, that is, the evidence. In UKCP09, this information comes from observations and outputs from a number of climate models, all with their associated uncertainties. The methodology which allows us to generate probabilities is based on large numbers (ensembles) of climate model simulations, but adjusted according to how well different simulations fit historical climate observations in order to make them relevant to the real world. The user can give more consideration to climate change outcomes that are more consistent with the evidence, as measured by the probabilities. One important consequence of the definition of probability used in UKCP09 is that the probabilistic projections are themselves uncertain, because they are dependent on the information used and how the methodology is formulated.

When planning an adaptation strategy, it is good practice to put in place measures that are robust across a range of probability levels. Probabilities have been included in UKCP09 to give users an indication of the strength of evidence for different climate outcomes. This should help users to make decisions on how to adapt to climate change, dependent on the risks they have to manage.

Yes. Defra organised an expert review of the methodologies used in the probabilistic projections, marine projections and the weather generator. A workshop with the reviewers followed this in January 2009. They confirmed that the methodologies used in UKCP09 were credible and represented a large step beyond UKCIP02 (an earlier set of climate change information), whilst noting that the techniques used are complex and require explanation and guidance.

Providing a range of results rather than single best estimate values, and the inclusion of an assessment of uncertainty is a central feature of the new projections and gives users a much more detailed picture about the level of confidence they can have in different outcomes as well as encouraging a flexible approach to be able to deal with a range of future climates. 

Attaching probabilities to different parts of the range of outcomes helps people to see which parts of the range are more likely and which less so, which helps to put a large range of results in context.

Of course, the probabilities cannot include every aspect of uncertainty. To ensure that users understand what has and has not been factored in to produce the results, users will be given guidance on the methodology used for the projections. This should enable users to analyse whether UKCP09, or another tool, is appropriate for the problem they are trying to address, so that they can make an informed adaptation decision.

The width of the ranges in UKCP09 are substantial even for the next few decades, due mainly to natural variability, and grow larger through the century due to uncertainties in climate feedbacks. It is unlikely that the range of any new results produced by climate projections in the next few years will be outside the current range. The UKCP09 methodology is designed to capture known uncertainties in the climate system built into the current generation of climate models, and is the most comprehensive approach to do so to date. For decisions that need to be made on the basis of current knowledge, the Projections are appropriate, and they make a useful contribution to assessing risks posed by future climate.