What does the data show?
Population from the UK Climate Resilience Programme UK-SSPs
project. The data is available for the end of each decade. Provided on a 2km
Transverse Mercator Grid (prj4string: “+proj=tmerc +lat_0=49 +lon_0=-2
+k=0.9996012717 +x_0=400000 +y_0=-100000 +a=6377563.396 +rf=299.324975315035
+units=m +no_defs”).
The source data was originally at a 1km resolution, but for
usability it has been converted to 2km resolution.
This dataset contains SSP1, SSP2, SSP3, SSP4 and SSP5. For
more information see the table below.
Indicator
Population
Metric
Population
Unit
Headcount
Spatial Resolution
2km grid (sourced from 1km grid)
Temporal Resolution
Decadal
Sectoral Categories
N/A
Baseline Data Source
ONS 2019; LCM 2015, Worldpop 2020
Projection Trend Source
IIASA; UK SSP urbanisation
What are the naming conventions and how do I explore the
data?
This data contains a field for each SSP scenario and the
year at the end of each decade. For example, 'SSP1_2040' is the projection for
2040 in the SSP1 scenario.
There are a small number of features in this data with much
higher population values than the majority of features. This can skew the
styling, and so if you want to emphasise areas of high density population you
may wish to adjust the style settings to account for this.
To understand how to explore the data, see this page: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/457e7a2bc73e40b089fac0e47c63a578
Please note, if viewing in ArcGIS Map Viewer, the map will
default to ‘SSP1_2020’ values.
What are Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs)?
The global SSPs, used in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) assessments, are five different storylines of future
socioeconomic circumstances, explaining how the global economy and society
might evolve over the next 80 years. Crucially, the global 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 a set of
future climate scenarios, the Representative Concentration Pathways or ‘RCPs’.
When combined together within climate research (in any number of ways), the
SSPs and RCPs can tell us how feasible it would be to achieve different levels
of climate change mitigation, and what challenges to climate change mitigation
and adaptation might exist.
Until recently, UK-specific versions of the global SSPs
were not available to combine with the RCP-based climate projections. The aim
of the UK-SSPs project was to fill this gap by developing a set of
socioeconomic scenarios for the UK that is consistent with the global SSPs used
by the IPCC community, and which will provide the basis for further UK research
on climate risk and resilience.
Useful links:Further information on the UK SSPs can be found on the UK SSP project site and in this storymap.Further information on RCP scenarios, SSPs and understanding climate data within the Met Office Climate Data Portal.