Developing rainfall modelling methods to assess changing flood risk
A project developing methods for generating artificial rainfall data incorporating scenarios of future climate change for any location in England and Wales.
Documents
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Details
One of Defra’s target outcomes is to manage the risk from flooding and coastal erosion in a way that furthers sustainable development.
Approach
The aim of this project is to develop methods for generating artificial rainfall data incorporating scenarios of future climate change for any location in England and Wales. This data is useful for assessing likely changes in flood risk, the effectiveness of potential strategies for risk management or the impacts of changes in land use.
Outcome
This project builds on project FD2105, which developed methods for the continuous simulation of rainfall and evaporation. It provides tools for assessing the flood risk from future climatic change. The technical report presents methodological developments for generating artificial rainfall sequences that are suitable for flood risk assessment and management. This project concludes that one regional climate model (RCM) alone cannot be relied upon to reproduce rainfall properties. Instead, the data from several climate models is combined to obtain a distribution of results.
The outputs of this project will be of particular interest to those involved in current flood risk and future flood mitigation.
This project ran from 2003 to 2006 at a cost of £153,961.