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Physically-based modelling of UK river flows under climate change

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Ben Smith, Dr Stephen Birkinshaw, Dr Elizabeth Lewis, Ellie McGrady

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Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).


Abstract

Copyright © 2024 Smith, Birkinshaw, Lewis, McGrady and Sayers. This study presents the model setup and results from the first calibrated, physically-based, spatially-distributed hydrological modelling of combined land cover and climate change impacts on a large sample of UK river catchments. The SHETRAN hydrological model was automatically calibrated for 698 UK catchments then driven by the 12 regional climate model projections from UKCP18, combined with urban development and natural flood management scenarios. The automatic calibration of SHETRAN produces a median Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency value of 0.82 with 581 catchments having a value greater than 0.7. 24 summary metrics were calculated to capture changes to important aspects of the flow regime. The UKCP18 realisations in SHETRAN indicate that a warming climate will cause river flows, on average, to decrease. These decreases are simulated to be greatest in the south and east of the UK, with droughts becoming longer and more severe. While high flows also decrease on average, an increased number of extremes are exhibited, implying a greater number of extreme flood events in the future, particularly in the north and west of the UK. In the urban development scenarios, for flood events there is an increase in flow with the increased urbanization, with the 1 in 3-year peak flow event showing the greatest increase. The natural flood management scenarios consider the effect of increasing woodland and adding surface water storage ponds. The inclusion of these features produces a complex response but overall, the modelling shows a reduction in low, median, and high flows, although the more extreme the flow event the smaller the percentage change in flow. Simulated timeseries and summary metric datasets are freely available on the CEDA archive.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Smith BA, Birkinshaw SJ, Lewis E, McGrady E, Sayers P

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Frontiers in Water

Year: 2024

Volume: 6

Online publication date: 14/10/2024

Acceptance date: 17/09/2024

Date deposited: 25/11/2024

ISSN (electronic): 2624-9375

Publisher: Frontiers Media SA

URL: https://doi.org/10.3389/frwa.2024.1468855

DOI: 10.3389/frwa.2024.1468855

Data Access Statement: The datasets presented in this study can be found in online repositories. The names of the repository/repositories and accession number(s) can be found below: OpenCLIM—Catchment Flow Metrics, https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/81567bfb789e4ec4ae30cdd3772f8242; OpenCLIM—Catchment Discharges, https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/a2e1601a29004c13849be5e84594f37a


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Funding

Funder referenceFunder name
OpenCLIM project (NERC—NE/T013931/1)

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