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Met Office launches new Local Authority Climate Service

The Met Office has launched the Local Authority Climate Service, a tool that provides local authorities with easy access to tailored information on climate change, to support local climate change adaptation planning.

It is clear that our climate is changing; underlying the natural variability we have in our weather across the UK is a continuing and increasing influence of human induced climate change which is shaping the weather we experience. Most notably we’re seeing more extreme heat and intense rainfall events, with impacts felt at the local level.

To deal with this, local authorities are considering their resilience to our changing climate and how they need to adapt to the weather we experience. The Met Office has worked with Esri UK to build the new operational service to help local authorities visualise climate challenges, explore climate projections and communicate a climate story specific to their local areas.  

The service will equip local authorities with critical climate information helping them to make informed adaptation plans and decisions, empowering organisations to increase their resilience and meet statutory requirements. 

The Local Authority Climate Service is a new tool built using Esri functionality to enable Met Office Climate Data to be viewed geospatially. It features functionality which enables data to be viewed and analysed on a map by local authority boundary, with climate data overlaid onto the area.

“SWM has been calling for the UK climate projections to be made available at the local authority spatial scale for many years; planning is, more often than not, done at this level. This will hopefully help climate risk assessing and adaptation planning at the council level easier. Alongside this, we hope that that there is a robust engagement plan carried out by the Met Office to help councils understand what the scenarios mean for them and their area.”

SWM Senior Sustainability Adviser, Alan Carr

Access the Local Authority Climate Service tool here.

Lacs toolkit

More information

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