Current warming and likely future impacts - Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects - page 309

6.3 Casestudy:climateandnaturalsystemsintheUK
It was the UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher (herself inspired by the UK's former
UN ambassador Crispin Tickell), who in the 1980s did much to promulgate climate
change concerns among international politicians. Whereas researchers in the USA
had done important climate work (for example at the National Center for Atmospheric
Research in Boulder, Colorado), it is probably fair to say that US research into likely
impacts was not pursued as vigorously as in the UK. Already by the late 1980s
(before the first IPCC assessment) UK state-funded science had climate change as a
research priority and was communicating research outputs to a broader audience, such
as with the Natural Environment Research Council's (NERC's) former Institute of
Terrestrial Ecology (ITE) booklets (the ITE subsequently became the NERC's Centre
for Ecology and Hydrology, or CEH). The first of these booklets was Climate Change,
Rising Sea Level and the British Coast (Boorman et al., 1989). This considered the
likely impact of a sea-level rise of up to 1.65 m over the next 100 years. It noted
that estimates for maintaining sea defences to withstand (as opposed to retreat from)
this sea-level rise would cost some GB£5 billion in the money of the day. It cited
stretches of the coast and land deemed at risk from sea-level rise (see Figure 6.7).
It also considered what would be the general ecological impacts of various response
options, from raising present sea walls and building storm-surge barriers to new sea
walls constructed landward, as well as abandonment and retreat. Each measure would
have an effect on biomes; specifically, changing their size. One of the first significant
events testifying to the ITE's concerns came in November 2007 when a storm surge
hit the coast of East Anglia. A flood alert was issued for Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex
as well as East London downstream of the River Thames flood barrage. The flood risk
was deemed to be the worst since 1953 and police personally called on some 7500
households recommending temporary evacuation. Fortunately the defences held, but
the Environment Agency (the UK Government agency responsible for flood defence)
Chief Executive Barbara Young said that East Anglia had come within a 'whisker'
of widespread flooding. With climate change, and its related sea-level rise, such
incidents will increase.
Of greatest wildlife concern are the likely effects on salt marshes and mudflats.
Here the effects depend on which coast-management option is chosen. However, in
addition to whether the UK adopts protection or retreat, there are likely to be transition
problems which could greatly restrict a biome before expansion as coastal biotic and
abiotic systems adjust to new sea levels. In addition to biome-related flora and
invertebrates, bird populations were considered to be at greatest risk. Unfortunately
the likely impacts are too numerous (due to many possible management options) for
them to be summarised here.
Turning to subsequent research outputs, early in the 21st century there were two
major reports on climate change impacts on British natural systems. The first was
the 2000 Government departmental report Climate Change and UK Nature Con-
servation: a Review of the Impact of Climate Change on UK Species and Habitat
Conservation (or UKCIP, UK Climate Impacts Programme, 2011), published by the