Understand climate change adaptation
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing the railway today.
Over the past few years, we have seen unprecedented rainfall, storms and heatwaves – all of which have affected our railway.
Climate change is projected to increase the frequency and severity of extreme weather, and we need to plan now to keep passengers and services safe.
Adapting our railway to a changing climate, and making it more resilient to extreme weather, is a priority for the UK and Scottish Government and our customers. That’s why it is one of the key ambitions in our Greener Railway Strategy.
This page contains information on how climate change is projected to impact the railway and what we can do about it. How we are Planning for Climate Change is summarised in this video:
What is adaptation and what is resilience?
Adaptation is the process of adjusting to current or expected climate change and its effects. Adaptation seeks to reduce risks, moderate harm, and take advantage of opportunities from today’s changed climate conditions. It is something you do to prepare for impacts from future changes.
Resilience is the ability of assets, networks and systems to anticipate and cope with climate related shocks, and to recover from their impacts quickly and efficiently. It is the ‘state’ you achieve.
Bringing these together, we can build resilience to the impact of events and adapt to future changes in the operating environment. This will enable us to transform the way we work and build a railway fit for the future.
How does weather and climate change impact the railway?
Almost every kind of weather we get in Great Britain can have an impact on the railway. Our 200-year-old infrastructure wasn’t designed to operate in today’s climate, and the images below show how weather can affect our assets, damage our infrastructure, and cause delays. An explanation of these delays is explained on the Network Rail website.
Find out more about how weather cases delays on the railway:
Flooding – Network Rail
Landslips – Network Rail
Leaves on the line – Network Rail
Winter weather – snow and ice – Network Rail
What does stormy weather do to the railway – Network Rail (PDF)
Hot weather and the railway – Network Rail
Climate change will cause existing weather patterns to shift, changing the severity, frequency and impact of events. Maintaining and improving our resilience will become more difficult as these changes increase the risk and impact of asset failures to unacceptable levels.
We have undertaken a climate change risk assessment which quantifies the risk from these impacts now and in the future, under different climate change scenarios.
Guidance
We have produced guidance notes to support the assessment of climate change impacts and identification of future climate projections to support project design. This should be used by anyone doing project design and development work on behalf of Network Rail.
Climate Change Projections
There is a huge amount of complex climate change data available. As such, we have developed guidance to make it easier to identify which information to use for risk and impact assessment, asset design and strategic planning.
The rail industry has agreed to use a standardised set of Climate projections for rail in order to ensure consistency in risk assessment and asset design across all organisations. Our guidance aligns with these agreed scenarios, and it is important that they are used in all work across the railway.
Our Climate Change Projections Guidance provides the climate change data necessary to assess the impact of climate change on the railway.
You can find the Climate Change Projections guidance note on the Guidance notes page.
Weather and Climate Impact Assessment Methodology
Our Weather and Climate Impact Assessment helps you answer the question ‘how can weather and climate change affect what I am doing?’
It provides a methodology for assessing the hazards, vulnerability and exposure of assets and activities to understand impacts and develop options resilient to these risks for project/asset planning and design. It is linked with our asset design process but the basic methodology in the first few steps can be applied to any activity, project or strategy.
You can find the Weather and Climate Impact Assessment on the Guidance notes page.
Adaptation Pathways
Our approach to adaptation pathways is evolving as we progress with the work. We have produced guidance on the methodology for regions to support delivery of adaptation pathways projects and to set a consistent approach across the railway network. This guidance will be updated as the methodology developed so keep an eye on the issue number to see whether it has changes since you last accessed it.
You can find the Adaptation Pathways Methodology guidance note on the Guidance notes page.