The UK Met Office has launched a five-year programme of climate change research, aimed at developing better understanding of the regional effects of climate change, and to provide policy makers with the tools they need to tackle climate change both in the UK and internationally.

Dubbed the Integrated Climate Programme (ICP), the research programme will feed its findings into the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

"The case for man-made climate change has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt," said Vicky Pope, head of the Climate Change for Government at the Met Office Hadley Centre.

"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."

Defra spokesman Phil Woolas said that there was now international consensus on climate change, and that science was at the heart of that agreement. ®

Related stories

• UK climate change funding cut by 25% (26 June 2009)
• Mystic Met Office predicts neighbourhood Thermageddon (24 June 2009)
• World leaders meet to tackle global warming (24 September 2007)
• Public rejoices at new 'green' nukes (11 September 2007)
• Greens walk out of nuclear debate (7 September 2007)
• BBC cans Planet Relief special (5 September 2007)
• Green taxes are a rip off says low tax lobby group (3 September 2007)
• Plants will make greenhouse effect flooding worse (30 August 2007)
• Tropics getting extra rainy, NASA boffins say (28 August 2007)