Authors

Source

Type

Peer Review

Audience

Pages

Notes

There are three interrelated phenomena which need to be identified in reviewing the potential impacts of climate change on gardens.

The first is climate change itself. The climatic changes expected in the UK are described in the report Climate Change Scenarios for the United Kingdom: The UKCIP02 Scientific Report (Hulme et al., 2002). This report examines the potential impacts of the expected climate changes on gardens in the UK.

The second phenomenon is the occurrence of extreme weather events such as floods and droughts. Climate change is expected to increase the frequency of some extreme weather events, but predictions of such events are less certain than those for average changes in climate. Predictions of gale frequency in future are particularly uncertain.

The third phenomenon is development. The Earth’s
surface has changed dramatically as a result of human activity. Forests have been cleared (in the UK as elsewhere), grasslands have been ploughed and fields covered with houses, factories, motorways and airports. People travel much more widely and much more frequently than was the case even twenty years ago. Some of these changes are root causes of climate change. Others serve to intensify the impacts of climate change or to bring them to wider notice. Covering previously absorbent land surfaces with concrete alters the hydrological balance and exacerbates the severity of floods and droughts caused by extreme weather events. Building houses in floodplains increases the risk and cost of flood damage by orders of magnitude. Moving around the globe results in the spread of pests and diseases, of plants and of humans, to new areas so it is often impossible to say if changes in disease incidence are the results of climate change or of human activity.