SINATRA project Sub-Task 1.3
Atmospheric Precursors
Susceptibility of catchments to INTense RAinfall and flooding (SINATRA) is a consortium lead by Hannah Cloke funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Flooding From Intense Rainfall (FFIR) programme running from 2013-2017. The work-flow is shown below (see project proposal, RCUK description, blog post and project website (joint with sister project FRANC!) for more details):
Sub-task 1.3 will analyse atmospheric precursors for flooding from intense rainfall which will investigate the atmospheric conditions at the large-scale which lead to intense flooding events. We will also use results and techniques from the NERC Changing Water Cycle projects HyDEF and CONVEX projects.
Above is an animation of the total atmospheric water vapour (colours) with arrows denoting a strong flows of moisture above 1000 kg per metre per second leading up to the flooding in Newcastle on the 28 June. We hope to understand the links between these large-scale flows in moisture and summer flooding events in the UK in this work task.
ST1.3 publications
Fowler H, Lenderink G, Prein A, Westra S, Allan RP, Ban N, Barbero R, Berg P, Blenkinsop S, Do H, Guerreiro S, Haerter J, Kendon E, Lewis E, Schaer C, Sharma A, Villarini G, Wasko C, & Zhang X (2021) Anthropogenic intensification of short-duration rainfall extremes, Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, in press, doi:10.1038/s43017-020-00128-6.
Fowler H, H Ali, RP Allan, N Ban, R Barbero, P Berg, S Blenkinsop, NS Cabi, S Chan, M Dale, RJH Dunn, M Ekstrom, JP Evans, G Fosser, B Golding, SB Guerreiro, GC Hegerl, A Kahraman, EJ Kendon, G Lenderink, E Lewis, X Li, PA O'Gorman, HG Orr, KL Peat, AF Prein, D Pritchard, C Schar, A Sharma, PA Stott, R Villalobos-Herrera, G Villarini, C Wasko, MF Wehner, S Westra and A Whitford (2021) Towards advancing scientific knowledge of climate change impacts on short-duration rainfall extremes, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A., (highlighted by AGU Advances, April 2021) 379, 20190542, doi:10.1098/rsta.2019.0542.
Allan RP, M Barlow, MP Byrne, A Cherchi, H Douville, HJ Fowler, TY Gan, AG Pendergrass, D Rosenfeld, ALS Swann, LJ Wilcox and O Zolina (2020) Advances in understanding large-scale responses of the water cycle to climate change, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1472, 49-75, doi: 10.1111/nyas.14337. PDF #openaccess (part of @NYASciences Special Issue: The Year in Climate Science Research)
Allan RP, S Blenkinsop, HJ Fowler, AJ Champion (2020) Atmospheric precursors for intense summer rainfall over the UK, Int. J. Climatology, 40, 3849-3867. doi: 10.1002/joc.6431. PDF
Champion, A.J., Blenkinsop, S., Li, X.-F., Fowler, H.J. (2019): Synoptic-scale precursors of extreme UK summer 3-hourly rainfall. JGR-Atmospheres, 124, 4477-4489, doi:10.1029/2018JD029664.
Flack, D.L.A, Skinner, C.J., Hawkness-Smith, L., O'Donnell, G., Thompson, R.J., Waller, J.A., Chen, A.S., Moloney, J., Largeron, C., Xia, X., Blenkinsop, S., Champion, A.J., Perks, M.T., Quinn, N., Speight, L.J. (2019): Recommendations for Improving Integration in National End-to-End Flood Forecasting Systems: An Overview of the FFIR (Flooding From Intense Rainfall) Programme. Water, 11, 725, doi:10.3390/w11040725.
Blenkinsop S, Fowler HJ, Barbero R, Chan SC, Guerreiro SB, Kendon E, Lenderink G, Lewis E, Li X-F, Westra S, Alexander, Allan RP, Berg P, Dunn RJH, Ekström M, Evans JP, Holland G, Jones R, Kjellström E, Klein-Tank A, Lettenmaier D, Mishra V, Prein AF, Sheffield J, and Tye MR (2018) The INTENSE project: using observations and models to understand the past, present and future of sub-daily rainfall extremes, Adv. Sci. Res., 15, 117-126, doi:10.5194/asr-15-117-2018 (PDF)
Allan, R. P., D. A. Lavers and A. J. Champion (2016), Diagnosing links between atmospheric moisture and extreme daily precipitation over the UK, Int. J. Climatol., 36, p. 3191-3206, doi: 10.1002/joc.4547. PDF
Zveryaev, I. I., M. Zhan and R. P. Allan, (2016), Interannual Variability in the Summertime Hydrological Cycle over European Regions, J Geophys. Res., 121, p.5381-5394, doi:10.1002/2015JD024425. PDF
Wood, E., R Lamb, S Warren, N Hunter, J Tawn, RP Allan, S Laeger (2016) Development of large scale inland flood scenarios for disaster response planning based on spatial/temporal conditional probability analysis, E3S Web of Conferences 7, 01003, doi:10.1051/e3sconf/20160701003
(73) Champion, A.J., R.P. Allan and D.A. Lavers, (2015) Atmospheric Rivers don't explain UK Summer Extreme Rainfall, Journal of Geophysical Research, 120, 6731-6741, doi: 10.1002/2014JD022863 | PDF
Meetings
26 March 2015 - Richard Allan attends and Environment Agency board meeting to discuss Spatial Joint Probability for FCRM and National Risk Assessment project
28 January 2015 - Rob Lamb visits from JBA to discuss scenarios for multiple flooding events
10 February 2015 Members of the SINATRA ST1.3 team visited the Flood Forecasting Centre at the Met Office and were hosted by Charlie Pilling
18-20 November 2014 - A SINATRA project meeting was held in Newcastle
FFIR integration meeting, University of Reading
12th November - SINATRA Kick-off meeting, University of Reading
ST1.3 presentation on Atmospheric Precursors to Flooding from Intense Summer Rainfall
Links
Here will appear a growing list of links to journal papers, blogs and web links that are of relevance to the SINATRA project (specifically ST1.3).
Datasets
SSMIS satellite estimates of rainfall and water vapour
ECMWF reanalysis data (registration required) including ERA CLIM
20th Century Reanalysis| NOAA plotting portal
European high resolution reanalysis
MIDAS surface station data
British Rainfall publication 1860-1968 digitised by Met Office
TIGGE ensembles from ECMWF (2006-present)
NOAA global ensemble reforecast dataset (webinar)
Dissertations
Burton, C. "How weather patterns have contributed to extreme precipitation in the United Kingdom, and links to past flood events, 2011, MSc Dissertation
Relevant Journal papersAllan, R. P., C. Liu, M. Zahn, D. A. Lavers, E. Koukouvagias and A. Bodas-Salcedo (2014) Physically consistent responses of the global atmospheric hydrological cycle in models and observations, Surv. Geophys., doi:10.1007/s10712-012-9213-z (PDF)
Arnell and Gosling (2014) The impacts of climate change on river flood risk at the global scale, Climatic Change, doi:10.1007/s10584-014-1084-5
Berg et al.(2009), Seasonal characteristics of the relationship between daily precipitation intensity and surface temperature, JGR., doi:10.1029/2009JD012008.
Berg et al. (2013), Strong increase in convective precipitation in response to higher temperatures, Nat. Geosci., doi:10.1038/NGEO1731.
Blenkinsop et al. (2015) Temperature influences on intense UK hourly precipitation and dependency on large-scale circulation, ERL, 10, 054021 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/10/5/054021
Clark, R. C. and D. C. Webb (2013) A severe hailstorm across the English Midlands on 28 June 2012, Weather, 68, 284-291, DOI: 10.1002/wea.2162
Chan et al. (2016) Downturn in scaling of UK extreme rainfall with temperature for future hottest days, Nature Geoscience, 9, 24-28, doi:10.1038/ngeo2596
Dacre et al. (2014) How do atmospheric rivers form? Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., doi: 10.1175/bams-d-14-00031.1.
Gao et al. (2015) Dynamical and thermodynamical modulations on future changes of landfalling atmospheric rivers over western North America, JGR, doi: 10.1002/2015GL065435.
Gimeno et al. (2014) Atmospheric rivers: a mini-review., Frontiers in Earth Science, 2, doi:10.3389/feart.2014.00002.
Hagos et al. (2015) Resolution and dynamical core dependence of atmospheric river frequency in global model simulations. J. Climate, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00567.1.
Kao, S.-C., and A. R. Ganguly (2011), Intensity, duration, and frequency of precipitation extremes under 21st-century warming scenarios, J. Geophys. Res., 116, D16119, doi:10.1029/2010JD015529.
Kendon et al. (2014) Heavier summer downpours with climate change revealed by weather forecast resolution model, Nature Climate Change, doi:10.1038/nclimate2258
Lavers, D. A., R. P. Allan, G. Villarini, B. Lloyd-Hughes, D. J. Brayshaw and A. J. Wade (2013) Future Changes in Atmospheric Rivers and Their Implications for Winter Flooding in Britain, Environmental. Res. Lett. 8, 034010 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034010 | PDF
Lavers, D. A., G. Villarini, R. P. Allan, E. F. Wood and A. J. Wade (2012) Atmospheric Rivers in atmospheric reanalyses: their detection, and links with the large-scale climatic circulation and British winter floods, J Geophys. Res. , 117, D20106, doi:10.1029/2012JD018027 | PDF
Lavers, D. A., R. P. Allan, E. F. Wood, G. Villarini, D. J. Brayshaw and A. J. Wade (2011) Winter floods in Britain are connected to atmospheric rivers, Geophys. Res. Lett. , 38, L23803, doi: 10.1029/2011GL049783 | PDF
Lepore et al. (2015) Temperature and CAPE dependence of rainfall extremes in the eastern United States, GRL, DOI: 10.1002/2014GL062247
Lenderink and Van Meijgaard (2008) Increase in hourly precipitation extremes beyond expectations from temperature changes, Nat. Geosci., doi:10.1038/ngeo262
Lenderink and van Meijgaard (2010) Linking increases in hourly precipitation extremes to atmospheric temperature and moisture changes. Environ. Res. Lett., 5, 025208, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/025208
Lewis, M. W. and S. L. Gray (2010) Categorisation of synoptic environments associated with mesoscale convective systems over the UK, Atmos. Res., 97, 194-213, 10.1016/j.atmosres.2010.04.001
Molnar et al. (2015) Storm type effects on super Clausius-Clapeyron scaling of intense rainstorm properties with air temperature, HESS, 19, 1753-1766, doi:10.5194/hess-19-1753-2015
O'Gorman, P. (2015) Precipitation Extremes Under Climate Change, Curr Clim Change Rep, doi:10.1007/s40641-015-0009-3
O'Gorman and Schneider (2009) The physical basis for increases in precipitation extremes in simulations of 21st-century climate change. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 106, 14773-14777 doi:10.1073/pnas.0907610106.
Penning-Rowsell (2014) A realistic assessment of fluvial and coastal flood risk in England and Wales, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 40, 44-61, doi:10.1111/tran.12053
Scoccimarro et al. (2015) Projected Changes in Intense Precipitation over Europe at the Daily and Subdaily Time Scales, J. Climate, doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00779.1
Thompson et al. (2003) Close proximity soundings within supercell environments obtained from the rapid update cycle, Weather Forecasting, doi:10.1175/1520-0434(2003)018<1243:CPSWSE>2.0.CO;2.
Utsumi et al.(2011) Does higher surface temperature intensify extreme precipitation?, GRL, DOI: 10.1029/2011GL048426
Wasko et al. (2016) Reduced spatial extent of extreme storms at higher temperatures, GRL, doi:10.1002/2016GL068509
Zheng et al. (2015) Opposing local precipitation extremes, Nature Clim. Ch., 5, 389-390, doi:10.1038/nclimate2579
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Richard P. Allan Location: Department of Meteorology (2U15)
