Caroline Lucas – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Caroline Lucas on 2015-12-01.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what projection she has made of a global temperature increases by (a) 2050 and (b) 2100 caused by greenhouse gas emissions trajectories (i) under current trends and (ii) if all Intended Nationally Determined Contributions are delivered; what the implications of such temperature rises are in the UK for (A) coastal towns and cities, (B) extreme weather events and (C) food security; and if she will make a statement.
Rory Stewart
The Department of Energy and Climate Change and Defra have supported the AVOID Research Programme to project long-term climate change scenarios to understand how emissions reductions translate to global average surface temperature change. Based on a snapshot of the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) pledged by 1 October 2015, with an assumed continuation of comparable global emissions reduction to the end of the century, this analysis projects:
(a) (i) by 2050, with continued rise in global greenhouse gas emissions, warming of between 2.3˚C and 2.6 ˚C;
(ii) by 2050, if all INDCs are delivered and continued, warming of 2˚C;
(b) (i) by 2100, with continued rise in global greenhouse gas emissions, warming of between 4.2˚C and 5.2 ˚C;
(ii) by 2100, if all Intended Nationally Determined Contributions are delivered and continued, warming of 3˚C.
All of these estimates are temperature changes relative to pre-industrial global average surface temperature and best estimates of the climate’s sensitivity to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.
Under the Climate Change Act 2008, the Government has a statutory role to produce, on a five-yearly cycle, an assessment of the risks and opportunities for the UK arising from climate change. The first Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA) was published in 2012. It included consideration of impacts on our coastlines, on the frequency and severity of extreme weather, and on our food production. The CCRA used the 2009 UK Climate Change Projections to assess risks under different emissions scenarios up to the 2100s.
The National Adaptation Programme report which Defra published in July 2013 sets out how we are preparing for the impacts of climate change. This sets out more than 370 actions across key sectors involving government, business, councils, civil society and academia.
Work is underway on the second CCRA, which will include an up-to-date review of evidence on the effects of climate change. The CCRA Government Report and the associated evidence report will be published in January 2017. These will inform the next National Adaptation Programme due around 2018.
The Global Food Security programme recently launched a joint research council five-year £15 million research call on resilience of the food supply chain, in partnership with Defra and the Food Standards Agency.
