Atmospheric Rivers and the Land Surface: drivers of extreme floods.

This CASE-supported studentship aims to improve our understanding of extreme flood occurrence and to incorporate this knowledge into UK flood forecast tools and longer-term assessments to improve flood preparedness. Specifically, the project seeks to understand winter flood generation both in terms of the prevailing atmospheric conditions and the influence of catchment characteristics. The project will use some of the longest meteorological and hydrological datasets available in the World.

Flooding is the major UK natural hazard. Atmospheric rivers (ARs), narrow bands of intense water vapour transport in extratropical cyclones can cause some of the biggest winter floods in western and northern Britain, yet not every AR causes a flood and some winter floods occur without an AR present. This project aims to determine why, and put the findings into operational flood forecast tools.

Training opportunities: The training will be split between the University of Reading, ECMWF (Reading) and the Environment Agency (Bristol). Training will be given in meteorological and hydrological data analysis, programming, advanced use of Geographical Information Systems and statistical modelling. There will be opportunities to visit the study sites and the student will be part of a large community of environmental scientists at the University, ECMWFand the Environment Agency.