Understanding and managing climate change: the UK experience

Climate change has emerged over the last 25 years not just as a physical reality, affecting global and regional climates, but also as a socio‐cultural phenomenon – an icon of a globalizing world which is increasingly altering the physical fabric of our planet and at the same time demanding new forms of global governance. The UK, both through its scientific research activity and through its development of climate change policy initiatives, has been at the forefront of this emergence. This review traces some of this history from a UK perspective, with an emphasis on the last 10 years. The relationship between climate change science and policy has become increasingly reflexive, leading to new forms of research and institutional structures. The academic discipline of geography has been rather marginalized from this process.