Images of climate innovation

Climate-resilient future drainage systems

State-of-the-art climate model projections were recently released under the UK Climate Projections (UKCP) project, led by the Met Office and supported by the UK government. These show significant future increases to extreme precipitation from global warming. The FUTURE-DRAINAGE project, led by Newcastle University, has translated these projections into climate adaptation information for water resources stakeholders, helping them to design and manage drainage systems and surface water flooding into the future.

An illustration of a flooded house and car with an umbrella over them

Short-duration rainfall extremes are important for flash flooding with small river catchments and urban areas particularly vulnerable. Flood risk management aims to reduce flooding from rainfall extremes, but drainage and wastewater systems also need to manage runoff and sewer flow to reduce river and coastal water pollution. Scientific evidence suggests that short duration (1-6 hr) and longer duration (24 hr+) rainfall extremes are intensifying with global warming, meaning current standards for flood defences and drainage based on historically lower rainfall intensities are likely inadequate.

Flood and water management professionals need high-quality estimates of extreme rainfall change ('uplifts') to manage their infrastructure systems and cope with climate change. The FUTURE-DRAINAGE project, led by Newcastle University, has developed new guidelines for uplifts to short- and longer-duration (1-24 hr) rainfall extremes in the UK for use by water managers and flood modellers.

Uplifts were derived from state-of-the-art UK Met Office climate model projections: the UKCP Local 'convection-permitting' climate model ensemble provides a step-change in simulating hourly rainfall variability and extremes. UKCP Local is a key component of the UK Climate Projections (UKCP18); the first-time national climate scenarios have been produced at a resolution on a par with weather forecasts.

These uplifts are applied to storm profiles, by hydrologists, drainage engineers, and the flood risk community, and used as inputs to sewerage or fluvial flood models. In this way, they translate complex climate model outputs into climate service information valuable for future climate adaptation. Within FUTURE-DRAINAGE, these new storm event profiles were fed into hydrodynamic models at Loughborough University, producing flood inundation maps for six selected urban areas to examine potential changes to flood risk. The uplifts were also used by JBA Consulting to assess any changes needed to the Environment Agency surface water flood mapping for locations in England and Wales.

Entrant: Steven Chan/Hayley Fowler , Newcastle University

Copyright: Met Office design studio

Funding: NERC, DEFRA, BEIS, EA

Collaborators: Benjamin Youngman (Exeter University); Murray Dale (JBA Consulting); Xiaodong Ming (Loughborough University); Elizabeth Kendon, Christopher Short (Met Office, Hadley Centre); Hayley Fowler (Newcastle University).