The climate is a global interacting system so any changes can exert an effect anywhere across the planet.

Modelling Impacts

The Hadley Centre, part of the Met Office, is the UK’s official centre for climate change research. The Centre works towards the following aims:

• understand physical, chemical and biological processes within the climate system and develop representative computer models of the climate;
• monitor global and UK climate trends;
• use computer models to simulate climate change and variability in the past and to predict future changes;
• and attribute recent changes in climate to possible causes, including human activities.

There are various types of model used to simulate and predict the climate. Although limitations in computing power, our understanding of complex interactions of the climate system and future greenhouse gas emissions mean that we cannot eliminate uncertainty about model results, the ability to predict the likelihood of particular outcomes is improving.