Historically, climate change adaptation and mitigation have generally been treated separately, both in policy and in research. Mitigation has been the highest priority and has received the most attention, often driven by national and international policy commitments to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

This brief lists some important win-wins, conflicts and trade-offs between mitigation and adaptation policy objectives, both in Scotland and internationally. These examples highlight potential positive outcomes for Scottish adaptation and mitigation policies.

Understanding how the climate will be affected on a local and regional level is important in building resilience to the changing climate.

The main climate projections for Scotland are for hotter, drier summers and warmer, wetter winters. However, there are many factors that influence climate and weather events.

This project is a literature review to identify the latest scientific evidence about how the variability and predictability of the Scottish climate will change as a result of climate change.

The report considers the potential impacts that both internal variability (naturally occurring variability) and external variability (such as human induced greenhouse gas emissions) will have on Scotland’s climate into the future.

The UN climate change meetings in Cancun (2010) and Durban (2011) discussed changes to greenhouse gas emissions accounting rules and guidelines under the second Kyoto protocol. The Scottish Government asked ClimateXChange to advise on the implications for Scotland of the changes proposed for EU countries.

We were asked to look at:

• the impact of proposed EU accounting rules on the Scottish emissions total;
• the data requirements (and cost of collection) for implementing the accounting rules; and
• the potential policy impacts and costs.

‘Flexible adaptation pathway(s)’ is a relatively loose term used to look at how building flexibility in to adaptation can help to manage the long-term and uncertain nature of climate change impacts.

The approach uses risk-based decision frameworks involving thresholds and trigger points for making systematic adjustments in response to new information and changing circumstances.  It has its roots in financial risk management. 
 
This brief looks at how the flexible adaptation pathways approach is being used internationally and considers how it might be used in Scotland.

The Scottish Government asked ClimateXChange to conduct a comparative review of strategies for adapting to climate change in other countries. The review looks at how other countries have approached certain key issues in their adaptation strategies. It provides evidence and learning points for the Scottish Government to consider in formulating Scotland’s first statutory Adaptation Programme. ClimateXChange researchers reviewed 12 strategies from countries in Europe and beyond. 

The report has already informed policy thinking on how lessons from other countries can be applied in the Scottish context. It has also sparked some further, more focused pieces of work, which ClimateXChange is now undertaking.

The Scottish Government lodged an enquiry with ClimateXChange following a query received on future wind storms in Scotland. ClimateXChange researchers produced a brief that concluded that future climate projections of extreme wind speed are highly ambiguous. However, despite their high level of uncertainty, predictions of increased storm intensity and windspeed may be of interest to policy and the construction industry due to elevated risks.

The brief has already been used to inform policy thinking on how future wind storms might affect the built environment. More widely, the response is likely to be used by the Scottish Government to answer future queries on storminess in Scotland.

In an enquiry lodged in October 2011 by the Scottish Government, ClimateXChange was asked to explore scenarios for meeting the housing sector’s contribution to the Climate Change (Scotland) Act targets, with a particular focus on the period 2020-2030. ClimateXChange commissioned a team of experts at Glasgow Caledonian University to undertake the work.

The research aimed to provide a practical and realistic assessment of technical and policy options to reduce energy demand from the existing Scottish housing stock from 2020 to 2030.

The work was divided into two Tasks:

Task 1: Scope what Scotland’s housing stock can be expected to look like in terms of energy efficiency by 2020.

Task 2: Assess the abatement potential of Scotland’s housing stock from 2020-2030 in the context of a trajectory to 2050.