This article is part of the NI Adaptation Policy Explained Series, if you would like to learn more about the publications discussed in this document, you should have a look at our other links:

• NI Climate Adaptation policy in 2026: Introduction to CCRA4-IA and NICCAP3
  

• What is the Third Northern Ireland Climate Change Adaptation Programme (NICCAP3)?

• How can I use NICCAP3 and CCRA4-IA? | Climate NI

 

The fourth UK Climate Change Risk Assessment will be published by UK Government in early 2027, however the independent climate change risk assessment that informs the UK Government report was published by the Climate Change Committee in May 2026. This section will address what the difference is between the Climate Change Risk Assessment and the Climate Change Risk Assessment – Independent Assessment, as well as how the latter is structured, and how the current version has changed from its predecessor.

 

What is the Climate Change Risk Assessment – Independent Assessment (CCRA-IA) and how is it different from the UK Government Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA)?

Under the UK Climate Change Act 2008, the UK government must create a Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA) every 5 years. This report must assess the risks for the United Kingdom from the current and predicted impacts of climate change. The first CCRA was published in January 2012 and since then, subsequent CCRAs have been published in 2017 and 2022. The fourth CCRA (known as CCRA4) is scheduled to be published and laid before government in January 2027.

As part of this process, six months prior to when the CCRA is laid in Parliament, the Climate Change Committee publishes an independent report of the latest scientific evidence on the range of climate risks facing the UK and the level of urgency needed to address them. This report is used either in part or in whole by the UK Government for its CCRA.

Though heavily informed by the CCC’s report, the Government’s CCRA tends to be shorter, typically endorsing the findings of the CCC’s assessment and referencing it for more of the technical and scientific detail. Accordingly, the CCC’s independent report is sometimes of greater use as a source of detailed information on climate risk, and this is what will be explored in greater detail in this article.

The full title of the CCC’s independent report which forms the basis of the Government’s CCRA is called the ‘CCRA-IA’, where the IA stands for ‘Independent Assessment’. The fourth iteration of this cycle is therefore known CCRA4-IA.

The CCC has divided its CCRA4-IA into two separate sections for the first time:

1. The Technical Report: Scientific advice on the range of climate risks and opportunities for the UK
2. A Well Adapted UK Report: New for 2026, a ‘roadmap’ of potential solutions to address the UK’s climate risks.

 

What is The Technical Report?

The CCRA4-IA Technical Report provides the scientific basis for climate risks and opportunities to the UK, and is organised into seven chapters. Following an Executive Summary, the first two chapters provide an overview of the methodology and state of the climate, before the remaining five chapters each address a specific sector: Health and Wellbeing, Built Environment, Land, Nature and Food, Infrastructure, and Economy. A total of 41 climate risks and opportunities have been identified for the UK.

Chapter 1: Methodology

The opening chapter of CCRA4-IA sets out the methods underpinning the assessment to determine the most urgent climate-induced risks and opportunities facing the UK.  This chapter outlines the methodology behind the construction of the urgency scoring framework as well as the evidence-gathering and supporting processes that inform the assessment (report authors were required to draw on published evidence, supplemented by two calls for evidence issued to the wider academic, policy, and practice communities in 2024 and 2025.)

 

 

Chapter 2: State of the Climate

This chapter provides a UK-level summary of observed changes to hazards, grouped by their relation to temperature, water and wind, as well as Marine-related hazards and compound hazards. There is also some exploration of future changes, with the chapter including a dedicated section on tipping points within the global climate system and their implications for the UK, as well as an outline of research advances and current evidence gaps at the time of publication.

 

Within each of the hazard groupings mentioned above, there are several specific hazards, listed below:

• Temperature-dominated hazards:
  • Heat
  • Fire
  • Cold events
• Water-dominated hazards:
  • Rainfall, flooding, and further hydrological hazards
  • Drought in the UK
• Wind-dominated hazards
  • Strong winds from extra-tropical cyclones and low wind events
  • Severe thunderstorms, lightning and hail
• Marine temperature and sea-level
• Compound hazards

Each subsection is broken into the same four parts; the headline findings of the section, a contextual introduction to the hazard, the observed changes to the hazard over time, and projected future change.

 

 

Chapters 3 to 7: Sector Specific Chapters

The remainder of the Technical Report is made up of sector-specific chapters, each containing a breakdown of the risks relevant to that sector.

 

 

As seen in Figure 3 above, there are a range of scores for each risk.

1. The predicted magnitude of the impact, calculated according to the interaction of hazard, vulnerability and exposure and with the assumption of no further adaptation action being undertaken
2. The level of confidence of that prediction.
3. An ‘urgency score’, calculated according to the magnitude of impact projected across different time periods (present, 2030, 2050, and 2080).

Urgency scores are provided both at a UK-wide level and for each individual nation within the UK. These range from the high urgency scores such as ‘critical action needed’ and ‘critical investigation, to lowest priority scores such as ‘watching brief’ and ‘sustain current action’.

Each Chapter then provides further detail on each risk, including how they will be affected by the different hazards (e.g. extreme heat, cold or rainfall) and at different time intervals  and warming scenarios. Each country in the UK also receives a dedicated breakdown, with paragraphs addressing how the magnitude of risk and the urgency of action compares or contrasts with the UK picture more broadly.

The chapters and page numbers are laid out in the table below:

Chapter	Name	Page
3	Health	146
4	Built Environment	255
5	Land, Nature and Food	393
6	Infrastructure	543
7	Economy	681

 

 

What is The Well-Adapted UK Report (WAUK)?

The second ‘half’ of the CCRA4-IA is the Well-Adapted UK report. Where the Technical Report focuses on assessing and evidencing the range of climate risks facing the UK, the WAUK focuses more on what needs to be done to address the risks and ‘kickstart the delivery of change’.

Drawing on lessons from the target-setting and policies of emissions reductions, as well as examples of effective adaptation from across the UK and internationally, WAUK aims to set out actionable, measurable targets to make the UK resilient against extreme weather events such as rising heat, flooding, and droughts.

This report looks at adaptation across the UK as a whole, drawing on examples from each nation of the UK, making it a helpful publication for Governments in the devolved nations across the UK to improve future national adaptation programmes, including the next iteration of NICCAP here in Northern Ireland.

 

 

Structure of the WAUK Report

The report opens with three cross-cutting chapters before moving into its sector-specific analysis. These three chapters alone provide a very helpful high-level overview of CCRA4-IA for readers with limited time:

• Chapter 1 provides a short version of the risk assessment explored in the Technical Report, containing key messages on the impacts already being felt from climate change, as well as the implications of future climate change impacts in the absence of immediate and comprehensive climate change adaptation action.
• Chapter 2 sets out the case for adaptation investment and action. This chapter formulates the argument as to why pragmatic climate change adaptation action can reduce the impacts of a changing climate and vastly reduce the costs associated with them. Public attitudes towards adaptation, investment options, and the role of government action are all examined over the course of the chapter.
• Chapter 3 then addresses the principles for effective adaptation, responsible for defining what good adaptation looks like, and how it can be delivered across different systems without risking maladaptive practices. The key, actionable takeaway from this chapter is the Ten Principles for Adaptation.

 

 

Sector Specific Chapters

Rather than organising its analysis by the 5 risk categories used in the Technical Report (i.e. Health and Wellbeing; Built Environment; Land, Nature and Food; Infrastructure; and Economy), the WAUK Report instead breaks its analysis down across 14 Chapters, oriented around the key systems taken from the Climate Change Committee’s (also used to structure NICCAP3). This structure was used to create more detailed recommendations and to develop greater accountability. The WAUK report does however acknowledge that climate risks do not sit neatly within single systems, and that many of the most dangerous risks have the potential to cascade across multiple systems.

The 14 Chapters are listed in this table below:

Chapter number	Chapter Name	Page
4	Health	129
5	Built Environment and Communities	162
6	Public Services	193
7	Cultural Heritage	216
8	Water and Wastewater	235
9	Energy	267
10	Transport	303
11	Waste	333
12	Digital and Telecoms	352
13	Land	379
14	Sea	408
15	Food Security	426
16	Economy and Finance	448
17	National Security and International Engagement	483

 

 

Each sector-specific chapter follows the same four-part formula from the ‘Principles for Effective Adaptation’ set out in Chapter 3:

1. Set Ambition
2. Identify Actions
3. Enable Delivery
4. Evaluate Progress.

 

1. Set Ambition

Establishes the level of ambition required to adapt to the climate risks facing that sector, drawing on key risks identified in the Technical Report and comparing them against a series of objectives and targets that – if achieved – would constitute a well-adapted sector.

2. Identify Actions

Sets out the priority climate change adaptation actions required to achieve those objectives. These actions are specific to the challenges of each sector and operate across a variety of areas and spatial scales, ranging from social interventions such as behaviour change in the health sector (for example, the delivery of appropriate and accessible guidance on safe practice during high temperatures, flooding, and emergency planning), to single-building interventions in the built environment, such as the implementation of active and passive cooling measures to manage high temperatures.

3. Enable Delivery

Sets out the key conditions needed to deliver the actions identified in the previous section, with an emphasis on the scale and urgency required to achieve adequate adaptation. These conditions fall into two main forms: enabling conditions that can facilitate better integration of climate change adaptation actions, and policy actions that will improve adaptation delivery. These can depend on the sector and can include data and monitoring policy, regulatory action, or standard setting amongst others.

4.Evaluate Progress

Sets out mechanisms to monitor and evaluate each objective and target, to ensure that progress in reducing climate risks remains on track. Existing indicators for monitoring climate adaptation are highlighted, alongside the key gaps that remain.

 

What has changed from CCRA3-IA to CCRA4-IA?

Aside from the addition of the Well Adapted UK report as the most prominent addition between the CCRA4-IA and its predecessor, there have been some significant changes between the two publications in other areas. Some are structural, where changes have been made to how the information contained in how the findings of the Technical Report are presented, and while other methodological changes have been made to reflect the accelerating changes in our climate, and the increasingly severe predictions of the impacts of climate change.

 

Omission of the Sectoral and National Briefings

CCRA3-IA was accompanied by two types of summaries; one set of 17 thematic briefings (e.g. Business, Energy, Housing etc.) as well as four National Summaries of the implications of the CCRA3-IA findings for each devolved nation. At the time of writing, the CCC has not published similar Sectoral or National Summaries for CCRA4-IA, though findings for the individual nations of the UK are included throughout the reports. Climate NI has created a summary of findings for Northern Ireland, including a compiled list of risks and Urgency Scores for each risk.

 

 

Addition of new Urgency and Magnitude Categories

The introduction of a new ‘Critical’ category is one of the most significant methodological changes between the two assessments, designed to identify the highest-urgency risks for climate change adaptation action. Two new urgency categories have been introduced with the ‘Critical’ prefix, both of which sit above ‘More action needed’ (the highest score in CCRA3-IA Technical Report) in the CCRA-IA-Technical Report urgency scoring hierarchy; ‘Critical action needed’ and ‘Critical investigation’. The definitions of other climate change adaptation action categories remain the same as in CCRA3-IA Technical Report. The addition of these two new, highest risk categories is due to an increase in the overall risk beyond the scale that was used for the previous report, CCRA3

A further methodological development is the introduction of a new ‘Very High Magnitude’ category to quantify impacts in the order of billions of pounds of economic damages per year, thousands of deaths per year, or the loss of entire species groups. This threshold is met by one third of the risks assessed in CCRA4-IA in a 2°C warming above pre-industrial levels by 2050 scenario.

 

Condensed number of risks

In CCRA3-IA, 61 risks were assessed across five categories; Natural Environment and Assets, Infrastructure, Health, Communities and the Built Environment, Business and Industry, and International Dimensions

Urgency Score	Number of Actions
More Action Needed	34
Further Investigation	20
Sustain Current Action	4
Watching Brief	3

 

In CCRA4-IA, the total number of risks assessed has been rationalised to 41, alongside 2 opportunities across five revised sectors: Health and Wellbeing, Built Environment, Land, Nature and Food, Infrastructure, and Economy.

Urgency Score	Number of Actions
Critical Action Needed	8
Critical Investigation	12
More Action Needed	19
Further Investigation	2
Sustain Current Action	0
Watching Brief	0

 

Whilst the total number of risk and opportunities has reduced, the overall coverage of the risks is similar to that of CCRA3-IA Technical Report.

 

Increased level of risk

Global warming has accelerated since the CCRA3-IA Technical Report was published in 2021, and this acceleration is reflected in the findings of CCRA4-IA. Some of the headline changes include:

• The increase in extreme weather events and other observed impacts of climate change, such as sea level rise, are also accelerating. As a result, climate risks to the UK are assessed as now being higher than at the time of CCRA3-IA, driven by new evidence of accelerating changes in the climate, evidence of potential increases in exposure and/or vulnerability, and a persistent lack of adaptation progress.
• Unlike in CCRA3-IA none of the current and planned adaptation measures are considered sufficient to manage these risks or take advantage of emerging opportunities. Accordingly, none of the risks in CCRA4-IA have been assessed as requiring only ‘sustain current action’ or ‘watching brief’ at the UK level.