Exploring socioeconomic projections from the UK-SSP project

The  UK-SSP project  has developed shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) for the UK, to help answer key questions about the country’s resilience to climate change.

Some of the outputs of this project are quantified projections for the UK, mapped on a grid or to local authority boundaries. We will explore some of these for 2050-2079, alongside a climate scenario where global temperatures have risen by around 4C from pre-industrial.

The Global Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) are five different storylines of possible social and economic futures. They explain how the global economy and society might evolve over the next 80 years, and are used in IPCC assessments.

The SSPs are independent of climate change and climate change policy, i.e. they do not consider the potential impact climate change has on societal and economic choices. Instead, they are designed to be coupled with future climate scenarios.

When added into climate research, the SSPs can tell us what opportunities and challenges societal and economic changes may create for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

The UK SSPs are a UK specific version, created to be consistant with the global SSPs.

 _{(description adapted from the  UK-SSPs User Manual )} 

Video introduction to what the UK-SSPs are, and how/why they were created:

More information about the project and data can be found on the UK Climate Resilience Programme website:

The data is available for five scenarios, which are different storylines of possible societal and economic futures. These scenarios are independent of climate change or climate change policies.

By combining the UK SSPs with climate data, we can consider how societal and economic changes may affect climate change mitigation and adaptation plans.

This storymap will explore a few simple examples, using the SSP2 (middle of the road) scenario, alongside some UKCP projections of climate averages under the RCP8.5 (high emissions) scenario.

As average summer temperatures rise, the health impacts of high temperatures may affect larger areas of the UK. And at the same time, as average winter temperatures rise, the health impacts of cold temperatures may affect smaller areas.

The socioeconomic impacts of this will depend on the number of people in the affected areas, which is where adding SSP data can help. For example summer temperatures are projected to be highest in the South East, where population density is projected to be highest under this SSP2 scenario.

As well as health, this could impact on the government's cold weather payments, which are made when the average temperature in an area is recorded as, or forecast to be, zero degrees celsius or below over 7 consecutive days. Again, population density in the affected areas will be an important factor in the overall cost of cold weather payments.

During high summer temperatures, train tracks can buckle. Comparing areas with highest projected temperatures and the density of the current rail network could help assess the potential impacts of this.

Using SSP projections for the rail network, instead of just the current network, allows us to consider the range of what the impacts could be under different socioeconomic scenarios.

Projections of wetter winters and drier summers are expected to impact on water resources.

By including the SSP population density data, we can see that the highest density of populations are in the South East (under the SSP2 scenario). This could increase the potential impacts of the low rainfall averages in these areas.

The illustrative examples in this story map combine socioeconomic and climate projections, to highlight how the different impacts of a changing climate may develop across the UK under different scenarios of socioeconomic change and climate change.

Linking climate projections with a range of other data through the open climate data portal allows users to develop more insight into the potential quantitative impacts of a changing climate, and inform their planning and adaptation decisions.