YOU heard it here first. There is no climate change debate. Not any longer. It's old hat, yesterday's news.
At least, I should say, no debate remains over whether the climate is changing. Every credible scientist, commentator and politician agrees the evidence for a steadily warming climate is irrefutable.
And this is not just a distant problem – somet
hing for hotter countries to worry about or for future generations to fix. Climate change is happening now – figures from the Met Office show 13 of the 18 hottest years on record have occurred since 1990.
The debate has now turned to what the impacts will be and what we can do to avoid – or adapt to – the worst of it.
In Scotland, we will undoubtedly avoid some of the more extreme impacts likely elsewhere in the world. But there is certainly no room for complacency. Given that global emissions are expected to remain at a relatively high level for the foreseeable future, we can expect notable differences from the climate we have come to regard as typically Scottish.
So we need to adapt the way we live and work to cope with a future where important aspects of Scottish life could be affected – whether that means changes to the way in which we grow the barley that makes our whisky, the species of fish we land in the North-east ports or the future direction of our leisure and tourism industry. Indeed it may affect the degree to which we protect ourselves from floods or drought or even weather-related health issues such as severe bronchitis or heatstroke.
We have a very good indication that it's likely to be wetter and warmer during the winter months. This implies less frost – which on the face of it may seem like good news – but which at the same time could have implications for future incidence of agricultural pests.
It would seem we can expect a greyer, rainier winter outlook in future. Our tourist industry is already making adjustments; a few years ago the Cairngorm Ski Centre, near Aviemore, changed its name to Cairngorm Mountain signifying its switch from a winter-only attraction to an all-year one.
Towards the end of this century, the temperature on the warmest day of the year could be as much as 6.5C warmer, even in the north of Scotland. This might mean we see less of the "several seasons in one day" phenomenon that many of us who visit the Highlands will know only too well.
Cities are likely to experience even higher temperatures because the urban environment effectively holds in heat. And this may have adverse effects for anyone with underlying health difficulties. Here at the Met Office we are already working with the health services across Scotland to look at how patients can be alerted and protected from extreme heat or atmospheric conditions that cause breathing difficulties.
When it does rain during the summer, it's likely to be more intense than at present, raising the risk of the flash flooding we saw last summer in Fife.
Seas around the UK are projected to be 1.5 to 4ºC warmer than at present.
• Alex Hill is chief government adviser at the Met Office.
The full article contains 549 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
