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The new Integrated Climate Programme (ICP) of the Met Office Hadley Centre for the first time combines the requirements of the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Ministry of Defence for information on climate change. It provides an even stronger contribution to the development of the science that will be required to help policymakers and other stakeholders in the UK and internationally to deal with climate change in the future.

Vicky Pope, Head of the Climate Change for Government at the Met Office Hadley Centre, said:
"The case for man-made climate change has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt. It is now vital that the science moves to answer the questions on how climates may change regionally, what the risks of dangerous climate change are and what the potential impacts of climate change may be with different degrees of mitigation and adaptation. The ICP has been agreed specifically to answer some of these questions."

Phil Woolas, Defra's Environment Minister, said:
"There is now an international consensus that climate change is happening and it is the science that has been the foundation of that consensus. The Met Office Hadley Centre has played an integral part in this.

"Its work will continue to be essential in the fight against climate change. That's why Defra has pledged £74 million so that it can take forward its new work programme. This will not only enhance the world's understanding of the science of climate change, but also help inform Government policy on combating climate change."

Roy Anderson, Chief Scientific Adviser to the MoD, said:
"The MoD has identified climate change as a key strategic factor affecting societal stresses and the responses of communities and nations to those stresses. Consequently we have a pressing need for the best available advice on future climate change and, based on these predictions, assessments of the impacts of those changes on human societies at the regional and local scale. It is this that the Met Office Hadley Centre will deliver within the ICP."

The Met Office Hadley Centre ICP will deliver better climate science for policy and planning, with closer involvements with government through the provision of tailored advice on climate change and its impacts.

While the new programme includes additional supercomputing resource, a further step change could deliver much more significant improvements in predictions of both how climate change would affect the UK in particular and forecasting of severe weather events, such as the floods in summer 2007.