Further Information

A key challenge in communicating climate change impacts is in presenting information in forms that are relevant to a wide range of people and in forms they can understand and utilise, and at a spatial and temporal scale that are useful for decision making. Simple summaries about the possible future like ‘hotter, drier summers, and wetter winters’ are useful indications of general changes but lack sufficient detail to enable meaningful planning. The aim of the Indicators is to provide sufficient information across multiple climatic features to enable a clearer overall picture of change.

By using climate model projection data, at a daily time step and at a 1km resolution, we can calculate values of Indicators and Climate Summaries for things that people like farmers, foresters and other land managers, business managers, health care and Local Authorities can utilise to help plan for climate change impacts.

Here we have used a suite of Agrometeorological Indicators to show what the future changes to the climate mean in respect of features of the weather that land managers regard as important.

There are several types of Indicators, based on:

  • Dates of occurrence of a phenomenon e.g. start of field operations; last spring air frost.
  • Count of the number of days a phenomenon occurs, e.g. number of plant heat stress days.
  • Quantities, e.g. growing degree days, excess winter rainfall.
  • Indices, e.g. precipitation intensity (these do not have units).

    • This reflects our interest in land use and ecology in the context of achieving net zero emissions and biodiversity enhancement objectives.

    Some of the Indicators are based on calculating thermal time accumulation, with the unit used being degree days. This is a unit of measurement used to describe the cumulative effect of temperature over time, in other words the ‘running total’. Thermal time accumulation is the determining factor in controlling when plants and insects progress through development stages (e.g. how long it takes for wheat to progress from seedling emergence to flowering). Higher temperatures mean more rapid thermal time accumulation. The value of 5.6° is used to calculate some Indicators as this is the temperature at which grass would normally start to grow.

    The Agrometeorological Indicators have been applied in the UK at specific locations and in map form:

  • Rivington M. Matthews KB. Buchan K. Miller DG. Bellocchi G. Russell G (2013) Climate change impacts and adaptation scope for agriculture indicated by agro-meteorological metrics. Agricultural Systems 114, 15-31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2012.08.003
  • Harding AE. Rivington M. Mineter MJ. Tett SFB (2015) Agro-meteorological indices and climate model uncertainty over the UK. Climatic Change 128, 113-126. DOI 10.1007/s10584-014-1296-8. “Agro-meteorological indices and climate model uncertainty over the UK” | SpringerLink

    • The Indicators have been shown to be useful mediums through which to promote discussion about the consequences of climate change and help people plan for the future – see the following journal papers for details:

  • Matthews, K.B., Rivington, M., Buchan, K., Miller, D., Bellocchi, G., (2008) Characterising and communicating the agro-meteorological implications of climate change scenarios to land management stakeholders. Clim. Res. 37, 59–75. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24869464
  • McCrum, G., Blackstock, K., Matthews, K.B., Rivington, M., Miller, D., Buchan, K., (2009). Adapting to climate change in land management: the role of deliberative workshops in enhancing social learning. Environ. Policy Govern. 19, 413–426. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eet.525