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Human influence on climate in the 2014 southern England winter floods and their impacts

2016; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 6; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/nclimate2927

1758-6798

Nathalie Schaller, Alison L. Kay, Rob Lamb, Neil Massey, Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, Friederike E. L. Otto, Sarah Sparrow, Robert Vautard, Pascal Yiou, Ian Ashpole, Andy Bowery, S. M. Crooks, Karsten Haustein, Chris Huntingford, William Ingram, Richard Jones, Tim Legg, Jonathan Miller, Jessica Skeggs, David Wallom, Antje Weisheimer, Simon Wilson, Peter A. Stott, Myles Allen,

Hydrology and Drought Analysis

A succession of storms reaching southern England in the winter of 2013/2014 caused severe floods and £451 million insured losses. In a large ensemble of climate model simulations, we find that, as well as increasing the amount of moisture the atmosphere can hold, anthropogenic warming caused a small but significant increase in the number of January days with westerly flow, both of which increased extreme precipitation. Hydrological modelling indicates this increased extreme 30-day-average Thames river flows, and slightly increased daily peak flows, consistent with the understanding of the catchment’s sensitivity to longer-duration precipitation and changes in the role of snowmelt. Consequently, flood risk mapping shows a small increase in properties in the Thames catchment potentially at risk of riverine flooding, with a substantial range of uncertainty, demonstrating the importance of explicit modelling of impacts and relatively subtle changes in weather-related risks when quantifying present-day effects of human influence on climate. An ensemble of climate model simulations, as well as hydrological modelling and flood risk mapping, are used to show the role of anthropogenic warming on the extreme rainfall that caused the 2013/14 floods in southern England.