With the UK at increasing risk of monsoon rainfall due to climate change, the Met Office is channelling a large proportion of its£10 million research programme in 2008 into finding ways of predicting extreme rainfall – this time last year the UK received the largest combined rainfall since records began in 1766.
A new computer modelling system will now provide multiple “what if” forecasts of how weather might develop over a period of time. Whilst the Met Office has always been able to pick out possible extreme events – severe weather warnings – they were less able to calculate how likely they were to occur until a relatively short period of time before.
Flooding is now a huge issue for many parts of the UK and this early warning system should help the emergency services to evacuate more people from their homes and help to reduce the level of insurance claims – last years floods caused £3 billion of damage.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7453522.stm
Having our rain fall in buckets highlights the importance of rainwater harvesting systems for our homes. Research suggests that a third of all home buyers are more likely to buy a house if it has a rainwater harvesting system. Check out these excellent sites to source one for your home and to use the rain water in the garden: http://www.savetherain.info/
November 7th, 2008 at 11:28 am
We at Freerain are watching this research and more to see how our own rainwater harvesting system calculating software. We work on 18 days storage. We do this for two reasons, 1) rainwater can be stored for this period without any drop in quality and 2) in the UK this is the average period between significant rainfall.
But if the weather patterns are changing, then they way we calculate will also need to take into account these changes.