MSc Team Project 2009/10

Recent flooding events in the UK

Project Description

The advertised paragraph for this project was:

This project will look at the way in which the UK attempts to cope with high-impact weather events: flooding, in particular. It may consider forecasting methods and the predictability of extreme events; the communication of warnings and information to local authorities and to the public; and, the real-time procedures in place for responding to developing situations. Issues such as these will be compared and contrasted for recent high-impact flood events. Good examples would be the Boscastle flood of 16th August 2004, the July 2007 floods, and the recent (November 2009) flooding in Cumbria.

You may have noticed that another team project is running that deals with flooding. I have spoken with the supervisor concerned, and we have agreed that to make sure the projects do not overlap too much, this project will focus on pluvial flooding, whilst the other will focus on fluvial flooding. If you are not clear what those words mean, that should be the first thing to go and find out!

Suggested Organization

There are four students working on the project. It is suggested that one student concentrates on the forecasting of extreme rainfall, another concentrates on societal demands and responses and the other two concentrate on recent UK flooding events. One student could focus on studying the Boscastle flood of 16th August 2004, while the other might compare and constrast a range of other events. Suggested resources for each area are provided below. There are some overlaps between these. Don't hide from the overlaps: instead, search them out, because you will need to find them and discuss in order to produce a proper joined-up team project. Frequent discussion will be important, and carefully-chosen resources should be passed between students.

Suggested Resources

Important note: The following links and pointers to resources are intended as starting points only. You should chase any links and citations that seem interesting from these sites and articles (and then follow the links from the links and so on...) You should also make your own library and internet searches. I assume you are familiar with some of the archived weather data available on the web (if not then start with the links on the Weather and Climate Discussion pages, or just google for wetterzentrale and go from there) and you should use them to try to find out as much as you can about the meteorological conditions leading to recent flooding events.

Government Bodies and Public Responses to Extreme Weather

The Environment Agency website has a great deal of information about floods and a number of useful links. A good place to start on their site is here. A good recent report from them about flooding can be found from here. They also have a number of publications and reports than can be obtainedfrom here.

This website from the Cabinet Office has a lot of good links to information about floods, including the Pitt review of the summer 2007 floods, reports on the Carlisle flood of January 2005 etc. Be warned though that the Environment Agency seems to have rejigged their webpages since the Cabinet Office linked to them, and not every link I tried on there actually worked: there's still plenty of good stuff that does work anyway.

DEFRA also have a lot of information available on their webpages. Here is a starting point. See also the 'Making space for water consultation document' Section 14: Flood warning systems and emergency responses - here.

In 2004 DEFRA ran an interesting simulation exercise to test our responses to flooding. Also, I've not tried this one myself, but here is a link to a flood-simulation game that apparently lets you play the role of the government and make decisions about how to respond to a sequence of flooding events!

You might also try the National Flood Forum.

Forecasting Extreme Weather

There is more to life than the internet: don't forget that there is also lots of useful information kept in paper form in the departmental and university libraries. Look for catalogue numbers starting 551.48 for books on hydrology for example, which includes a shelf-full of fairly accessible texts in the department library.

The Met Office have forecasting products dedicated to floods. Information about its short-range forecasting can be found here. Also, some very recent news to be aware of is here.

Extreme weather forecasting at the European Severe Storms Laboratory and in the United States at the Storm Prediction Center.

The Tornado and Storm Research Organisation, TORRO.

A recent UK research programme into flooding. Also, a special issue of the journal Meteorological Applications was published in March 2009, devoted to recent flooding research. And, finally, a couple of articles that may be of interest: Collier CG. 2006. Flash flood forecasting: What are the limits of predictability? Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc., 133, 3-23, and Hand et al 2004. A study of the twentieth-century extreme rainfall events in the United Kingdom with implications for forecasting. Meteorol. Appl., 11, 15-31.

Recent UK Flood Events

An introduction to the Boscastle flood of August 2004. A special issue of the Journal of Meteorology was published in November 2004 dedicated to the Bosacastle flood. I will provide a copy of this (it's my copy so please return it at the end of the project!). In particular see the article by Robert Doe which gives an outline of the meteorology. You could also try Golding, B.W., Clark, P. and May, B. (2005) The Boscastle flood: Meteorological analysis of the conditions leading to flooding on 16 August 2004, Weather, 60, 230-235.

You might also look for information on the Carlisle flood of January 2005, the Yorkshire flood of June 2005, the floods of summer 2007, the Morpeth flood of September 2008.

Type obvious phrases into Google for some of these events: eg, when I tried "Boscastle flood" I quickly stumbled on an extensive photo gallery of the event. You should be able to find plenty of old news reports this way. Try searching for BBC and the flood location and date as a starting point. For discussion "as it happened" try searching some of the forums at UK Weather World (you may need to register to be able to access some of the pages there).