Resilience

The term 'resilience' refers to the ability of a social or ecological system to absorb disturbances while retaining the same basic structure and ways of functioning, the capacity for self-organisation, and the capacity to adapt to stress and change.

In detail

One of the aims of adaptation should be to improve resilience to a changing climate. Building climatic resilience involves minimising exposure to risks, reducing the consequences of resulting impacts, and/or facilitating earlier and less costly recovery following exposure. The probabilistic nature of the UKCP09 projections provides greater transparency about uncertainties, and encourages more robust decisions to be made; specifically decisions that increase resilience to a range of potential climate outcomes.

Find out more

• For information and advice on how to increase your resilience to a changing climate see the Environment Agency's Climate Ready Support Service.

• Last updated: Tuesday, 12 August 2014