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UKCP09 is the tip of the scientific iceberg

10 February 2010

Coverage of weather and climate has exploded in the media in recent years, thanks in no small part to a number of high-profile flooding events that wreaked havoc and caused problems for elements of our strategic infrastructure. The prolonged freezing weather and the fallout from the Copenhagen summit has also filled a significant proportion of our broadcasts in recent weeks. There is no question that climate change is a hot topic, but what does the science mean to all of us in the water sector? Do we recognise the true depth of what is looming out of the mist?
Leaving aside the argument of who or what's to blame, few scientists would dispute that we are likely to experience a greater number of milder and wetter winters, warmer summers, an increase in the frequency of summer droughts and more intense rainfall.
Now is the time to grasp the significance of climate change indicated by the UK Climate Projections 2009 (UKCP09), released by the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP). These give probabilistic projections of future climate for each decade to the end of the 21st century in overlapping 30-year time slices. A "weather generator" facility allows sampling of the probabilistic projections to produce simulated weather for a time and place of significance to the user, while a threshold detector post-processes the reams of data produced by the weather generator to produce statistics on the frequency of exceedance of user-defined criteria.
The use of these tools is in its infancy but, already, UKCP09 outputs can be usefully adapted to applications for the water industry. For example, WRc is using them to redefine rainfall design sets for river water quality modelling. Much more can be mined from this data, but UKCIP warns against making decisions based on the lowest or highest 10 per cent of data in the probabilistic projections.
So how are we meant to interpret and plan for extremes? In translating the climate projections into risk assessments for future investment planning, which probability level (and therefore level of risk) should we use? I would argue that sensitivity analysis of a range of climate scenarios and probability levels is essential, if only to obtain upper and lower bounds on the likely investment requirements to reduce our exposure from future climate change impacts.
However, there are significant barriers to gaining further investment to safeguard our infrastructure. The five-year business planning and price determination cycle leads to short-term investment decisions and is at odds with the 25-year or longer vision required for water resource planning. In a recent media poll, less than half of those interviewed said they believed we had any impact upon, or could influence, our changing climate. What hope, then, does the water industry have of persuading its customers that they need to pay more to adapt to climate change?
The scale of investment required needs substantial justification, and targeted research is needed to provide the evidence. The level of uncertainty in the current climate projections, while a more accurate representation of the true nature of the science than UKCP09, does not sit easily with our demand for deterministic forecasts. We need urgent research to quantify the costs and benefits of adapting to climate change across the water and sewerage asset base, including implications for water and wastewater treatment and below-ground infrastructure, from increased rainfall intensity and droughts.
UK Water Industry Research's work programme for 2011/12 should go some way to addressing these needs, but fundamentally the water sector needs to engage more with the scientific and research communities if it is to get best value from the climate science.
And what of mitigation? Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases now will help turn the tide in the longer term, but because our biosphere responds so slowly to changes in carbon dioxide, some amount of climate change is inevitable for the next few decades because of the greenhouse gas already emitted. Let us carry out meaningful research now to quantify the problem and assess how we can adapt our infrastructure, before the climate change "iceberg" hits.
Mark Kowalski, climate change consultant, WRc Group
Source: Disconnector

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