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Climate Driven Threshold Effects in the Natural Environment

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Climate Driven Threshold Effects in the Natural Environment Climate driven threshold effects in the natural environment Report to the Climate Change Committee May 2020 1 The author team comprises the following organisations UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology: Prof. Laurence Jones (Lead), Alice Fitch, Prof. Chris Evans, Stephen Thackeray, Bryan Spears, Iain Gunn, Laurence Carvalho, Linda May, Karsten Schonrogge, Hannah Clilverd, Zak Mitchell, Angus Garbutt, Philip Taylor, David Fletcher Vivid Economics: Ashley Gorst, Robin Smale, Glendon Giam, Jonathan Aron ADAS: John Elliott, Harriet Illman Forest Research: Duncan Ray Met Office: Fai Fung, Jonathan Tinker Bangor University: Sophie Berenice-Wilmes, Nathan King, Shelagh Malham Marine Scotland Science: Peter Wright The investigators are grateful to the CCC for the opportunity to work on this interesting issue. The support and guidance of the CCC team and wider Stakeholder Group are gratefully acknowledged, specifically: Committee on Climate Change Brendan Freeman (Project Manager) Kathryn Brown (Head of Adaptation) Ece Ozdemiroglu (Economics for the Environment Consultancy (eftec) and Member of the CCC Adaptation Committee). Prof. Dame Georgina Mace (University College London, and Member of the CCC Adaptation Committee) Prof. Richard Dawson (University of Newcastle and Member of the CCC Adaptation Committee) Prof. Mike Davies (University College London, and Member of the CCC Adaptation Committee) Steering group The authors also wish to express their gratitude for the very helpful advice, access to reports and data provided by: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) Environment Agency Natural Resources Wales Welsh Government Scottish Government Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), Northern Ireland Forestry Commission Natural England Scottish Environment Protection Agency 2 Internal review and contributions Dr Pam Berry (University of Oxford Environmental Change Institute) Iain Brown (University of Dundee) Marine Scotland Scottish Natural Heritage Consultant team: acknowledgement of additional support Sophie Berenice-Wilmes, Nathan King and Shelagh Malham were supported by the BlueFish project which is part funded by the European Regional Development fund through the Ireland Wales Co- operation Programme 2014-2020. Jonathan Tinker was supported by the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme funded by BEIS and Defra. Science support The support of UK Research Councils (NERC, ESRC and EPSRC) in contributing funding to this report is gratefully acknowledged. Please cite this report as: Jones, L., Gorst, A., Elliott, J., Fitch, A., Illman, H., Evans, C., Thackeray, S., Spears, B., Gunn, I., Carvalho, L., May, L., Schonrogge, K., Clilverd, H., Mitchell, Z., Garbutt, A., Taylor, P., Fletcher, D., Giam, G., Aron, J., Ray, D., Berenice-Wilmes, S., King, N., Malham, S., Fung, F., Tinker, J., Wright, P., Smale, R. (2020). Climate driven threshold effects in the natural environment. Report to the Climate Change Committee. May 2020. 3 4 Executive Summary The aims of this project are to provide improved evidence of possible climate risks in the natural environment that do not follow linear patterns of change, assess the resulting impacts of these effects on different areas of society (e.g. communities, industries, workforces), identify what aspects of society are most at risk, and assess the extent to which current and potential future adaptation strategies can address the risk, either through preventing the threshold impact from occurring or managing the impact when it does. Specifically, the project sets out to answer six questions: 1. What climate hazard thresholds represent points beyond which the effective functioning of key systems within the natural environment may be compromised, and why? 2. What are the resulting impacts on the goods and services provided to society from the natural environment? What would be the quantified impact? 3. Is there a risk of irreversible change in the ecosystems affected, or substantial time lags in recovery? 4. What is the impact of current levels of adaptation at mitigating these risks? 5. What additional adaptation management options could be undertaken, either in advance to reduce the risk of these thresholds occurring, or afterwards to manage the impacts? 6. In what scenarios are there limits to adaptation? The project followed three phases. The first phase was a literature review, conducted as a series of rapid evidence reviews, by habitat, to identify non-linear impacts which might occur in the UK. The second phase was a national screening assessment on a prioritised set of thresholds identified from the literature reviews. The screening assessment was conducted at national level, but with regional differentiation of the impacts. To investigate indicative impacts, these were quantified for baseline, and under 2 °C and 4 °C scenarios (independent of time), for a single climate model run. The third phase was a case study assessment which focused on a subset of impacts in more detail, drawing on climate data from 28 climate model projections provided by the UK Met Office. The case study assessments calculated a timeline of impacts to the end of the century, and produced summaries of impacts at baseline, the 2050s and the 2080s. The rapid evidence reviews were conducted on five broad habitat types: freshwaters, farmland, peatlands, woodland, and marine and coastal margins. The reviews identified 37 potential impacts, which were scored against a set of criteria to identify a shorter list to take forward. Following the scoring, a list of 12 potential impacts were identified for the national screening assessment. Four of these impacts were then further developed in case studies. The need to prioritise down the number of thresholds for detailed analysis reflected resource constraints for the project rather than the importance of the thresholds. Some potentially important thresholds were not taken forward for assessment, such as temperature effects on salmonid fish in rivers. The majority of these impact types had previously been identified in CCRA2. However, many only received cursory mention, and had not been explored with respect to the potential for non-linear responses, either in the magnitude of response, or the timing of when a response may occur. Where previous studies cited in CCRA2 had quantified some impact, there was usually no indication of the trajectory of change. 5 The key findings relevant to each of the questions are summarised below. What climate hazard thresholds represent points beyond which the effective functioning of key systems within the natural environment may be compromised, and why? The thresholds identified in the national screening assessment are summarised in Table ES1. Eleven of the twelve thresholds relate to temperature, and of those, one relates to temperature + rainfall in combination. The other is related to rainfall alone. A variety of mechanisms govern how the thresholds are manifested. They include: physiological controls acting at a species level (spawning of shellfish, impacts on milk yield of dairy cattle), climatic limits on growth or survival of individual species (livestock parasites completing their life-cycle, survival of the freshwater fish Vendace), competition mediated impacts on community assembly or overall habitat climate envelope (zooplankton and phytoplankton communities in lakes, condition of peatlands). In many cases, all or parts of the UK currently exceed the identified threshold, and are already experiencing greater ecological or economic impacts as a result. For example, the threshold water temperature governing change in zooplankton community composition in lakes is already exceeded in all regions of the UK. The case studies show that the time at which the threshold is crossed can demonstrate considerable variation across the UK over the course of this century. In general, temperature thresholds are exceeded first in the south and east of England, moving progressively west and north, with north Scotland being the last to exceed the threshold. Across all the thresholds assessed in this study, at least one part of the UK exceeds the threshold by the 2080s. What are the resulting impacts on the goods and services provided to society from the natural environment? What would be the quantified impact? The impacts on goods and services, or other societal end-points of value such as biodiversity are summarised in Table ES1 for the screening assessment, and Table ES2 for the case studies. They cover provisioning services (milk yield, lamb production, timber production, wheat yield, general crop yield, fish & shellfish habitat range), regulating services (water quality, greenhouse gas emissions) and cultural services (recreation), as well as biodiversity. Impacts are quantified in monetary terms, where possible, to understand the relative magnitude of threshold impacts, using both market and non-market valuation techniques. The impacts are presented as annual figures so that impacts can be compared for representative years under current conditions and in the future. It was not possible to calculate all impacts in economic terms, and some are expressed as increased magnitude or frequency of exceeding a climate threshold, or a change in an ecological variable. For example, the expansion of Pacific oyster is quantified as the viable area for spawning and reproduction, since it was not feasible to value the economic impacts of its spread. This study does not aim to estimate the difference between
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