Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/P010040/1
Atmospheric rivers and the land surface: drivers of extreme floods
Training Grant Award
- Lead Supervisor:
- Professor AJ Wade, University of Reading, Geography and Environmental Sciences
- Grant held at:
- University of Reading, Geography and Environmental Sciences
- Science Area:
- Atmospheric
- Freshwater
- Overall Classification:
- Freshwater
- ENRIs:
- Environmental Risks and Hazards
- Global Change
- Science Topics:
- Climate variability
- Climate & Climate Change
- Catchment effects
- Floods
- Regional & Extreme Weather
- Flood risk
- Hydrological Processes
- Abstract:
- The project aim is to improve our understanding of extreme flood occurrence and to incorporate this knowledge into UK flood forecast tools and longer-term assessments to improve flood preparedness. Flooding is the major natural hazard in the UK, with the winter 2013-14 floods estimated to have caused economic damages in England and Wales of around GBP 1.3 billion (Chatterton et al. 2016). Given this huge sum and evidence that severe flooding is likely to increase in future (Winsemius et al., 2015), there is a need to have better estimates of when, where and for how long UK flooding is likely to occur. Atmospheric rivers (ARs), narrow bands of intense water vapour transport in extratropical cyclones, have been demonstrated to cause the biggest winter floods in western and northern Britain (Lavers et al., 2011), as well as in Europe, western North America, South America and New Zealand. For approximately 50-80% of observed extreme winter floods in western Britain, ARs are the causal factor (Lavers et al., 2012) and, as these atmospheric features can be readily identified in satellite imagery, methods that detect AR presence are now being explored for use in operational flood forecasting to enhance flood-forecast lead times (Lavers et al. 2014). However, to reduce false alarms and better define those areas that will, or will not, be flooded there is a need to understand why, in those 50-20% of severe flood cases, there is no link between AR occurrence and flooding. Initial research suggests that the relationship between AR occurrence and severe flooding is dependent on the characteristics of the river catchment (Lavers et al., 2012), but this has not been tested. Thus, the purpose of this project is to understand why extreme winter floods can occur when no AR is present, and if there is an AR, which catchment characteristics control whether a severe flood is generated or not. This will be achieved through reexamination and enhancement of current methods to identify ARs in datasets of atmospheric water vapour, wind speed and direction, consideration of other synoptic features, and a geomorphological assessment of flood generation in nine representative river catchments spanning from Scotland to south west England. The findings will be consolidated into a new rule set to describe flood occurrence in preparation for inclusion into flood forecast tools and longer-term assessments. The Environment Agency (EA) initiated this application to integrate concepts of AR occurrence with those of flood generation, and then incorporate the unified conceptual understanding into flood forecasting tools to improve floodforecasts and longer-term (100 year) assessments of extreme flooding. The results will be used to inform catchment management for flood preparedness and policy development. The original research on which this application is founded has generated major academic and practitioner interest with Lavers et al. (2011) already cited over 70 times and featured in two New Scientist and numerous media articles. The proposed work builds on existing collaboration between the University of Reading, the Environment Agency and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and the project fits into NERC's remit on natural hazards and, through the focus on reducing the costs associated with floods, aligns with the Business of the Environment strategy. References Chatterton et al. 2016. Report SC140025/R1; Lavers et al., 2011 GRL; Lavers at al. 2012. JGR-A; Lavers et al. 2014. Nat. Comm; Winsemius et al., 2015. Nat. Climate Change; Lavers et al. 2016. GRL.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/P010040/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- DTG - directed
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Industrial CASE
This training grant award has a total value of £88,292
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| Total - Fees | Total - RTSG | Total - Student Stipend |
|---|---|---|
| £17,296 | £11,000 | £59,998 |
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