The Met Office has worked with the British Red Cross to develop a prototype website tool designed to help the charity’s staff and volunteers better understand climate-related risk and improve resilience to extreme heat events.
The project was funded under the Horizon Europe ASPECT program and began in 2024. The Met Office has been working with a consortium of European partners to improve prediction and projection information from the next season through the next 30 years, including support for using climate information across timescales in sector-specific decision-making.
The British Red Cross supports people during weather-related crises and emergencies in the UK, and while there is awareness within the organization of climate change-driven increases in extreme weather, some staff and volunteers may still have gaps in understanding, particularly around how climate change should inform decision-making across different timescales.
Hotter summers and more frequent heatwaves in the UK have led to a greater focus on heat-related emergency response, and the British Red Cross is aiming to embed climate-informed thinking across its resilience operations.
The initial phase of the work involved co-designing in-person training to help British Red Cross staff interpret climate tools such as the seasonal three-month outlook and the recently updated Local Authority Climate Service. That training was well received and led to the development of the more accessible website tool.
The website is publicly available and provides information on accessing climate information products from ASPECT consortium partners, ranging from seasonal forecasts to climate projections. It includes real-life examples of past responses to extreme heat and associated fire hazards, along with visual and video elements.
The site’s content was produced by the Met Office, while ASPECT consortium partner ECMWF implemented the website, which is hosted by the Copernicus Climate Change Service. Met Office material on the site is licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.
Summer Wyatt-Buchan, climate adaptation and resilience manager at the British Red Cross, said, “Working with the Met Office to co-develop the website under the ASPECT project has been a highly constructive and collaborative process.
“It marks an important milestone in embedding climate-informed thinking into British Red Cross emergency response operations. I believe this will be a valuable tool for our emergency responders, helping them build the awareness and confidence to factor climate-informed thinking into their decision-making.”
ASPECT partners at the University of Leeds are separately researching how people interpret heat-related European prediction information, and are inviting organizations affected by temperature change and heat extremes to take part in a 10-minute survey. In 2025, the British Red Cross became the Met Office’s newest corporate charity partner.
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