Climate change in CCAFS regions: Recent trends, current projections, crop-climate suitability, and prospects for improved climate model information

Good climate projections for agriculture can help guide investments in risk management and adaptation. New reports offer insights into the reliability of future climate projections for agriculture, and show how to make the most of current data

Temporal and Spatial Patterns of Near-Surface CO2 Concentrations in Singapore

Master'sMASTER OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

Water scarcity communication in the UK: Learning from water company communications following the 2018 heatwave

When communicating about water scarcity, public water companies in the UK operate within a fine balance. There is a legal obligation on water companies in the UK to promote efficient water use, and pressure on water resources means that water companies need to encourage changes in water consumption behaviors. However, there is a lack of information about the way UK water companies communicate with the public. This paper presents the results of research into UK water company practices and perceptions in engaging consumers around water scarcity and water saving and discusses what this means for water scarcity communication. Interviews with 10 water company communication teams (14 interviewees) following the 2018 UK heatwave explored opportunities, innovations and challenges in public communication. Interviewees recognized the need for an ongoing conversation about water in the UK and identified a number of practices which could support a change in public water consumption. The results highlight the perceived importance of trust, timing and community- or group-scale communications, and the need for a cross-sectoral and intergenerational approach to public communication about water resources. This research examines some of the current underlying assumptions of water companies about what influences public water consumption in the UK and offers insights into some of the key challenges and opportunities for the future

Developing resilience to England's future droughts: time for cap and trade?

Much of England is seriously water stressed and future droughts will present major challenges to the water industry if socially and economically damaging supply restrictions are to be avoided. Demand management is seen as a key mechanism for alleviating water stress, yet there are no truly effective incentives to encourage widespread adoption of the behavioural and technological demand management practices available. Water pricing could promote conservation, but on its own it is an inefficient tool for dealing with short term restriction in water supply. Raising prices over the short term in response to a drought is likely to be ineffectual in lowering demand sufficiently; conversely, maintaining high prices over the long term implies costs to the consumer which are needlessly high most of the time. We propose a system for developing resilience to drought in highly water stressed areas, based on a cap and trade (C&T) model. The system would represent a significant innovation in England's water market. However, international experience shows that C&T is successful in other sectors, and need not be overly complex. Here, we open the debate on how a C&T system might work in England

Droughts in future climate change in the UK

This thesis seeks to investigate the changes in the characteristics of 20th and 21st century meteorological droughts in the UK to address the following lines of inquiry: 1) How credible are rainfall-based indices in representing hydrological droughts, 2) How coherent are droughts?, 3) Can alternative method of analysis provide new (or additional) information on the uncertainties in climate models?, and 4) Will future drought characteristics change?. Key results, respectively, are summarized as follows: • The drought severity index (DSI), can be considered a good proxy for assessing hydrological droughts as can be seen in its ability to capture the major hydrological events. The main caveat of the DSI is that there is often an underestimation of drought intensity and duration, • Drought covariance is higher for the (i) wet season, (ii) moderate and (iii) shorter duration droughts, • Evaluating climate models using drought statistics produces contrasting results compared with that using the model's precipitation fields. Drought statistics show biases which are largely negative, more intense, and have a greater spatial coverage. • The projected ensemble-mean change is generally greater (and more widespread) for (i) moderate droughts and (ii) wet season compared with extreme droughts and the dry season, respectively with increases in drought intensity, drought covariance index, frequency of drought months and frequency of drought events for a given duration shown for England.</p

Does a rainfall-based drought index simulate hydrological droughts?

The drought severity index (DSI) is applied at 3-, 6-, 12- and 24-month time scales to both monthly gridded rainfall and monthly river flow datasets to evaluate if a rainfall-based drought index is able to simulate hydrological droughts. Time series of the rainfall-based and the flow-based DSIs are analysed at different drought severities and seasons at seven benchmark catchments in England. The analysis also includes the ability of the indices to reproduce the statistics of three drought characteristics, namely drought intensity, frequency of drought months and frequency of drought events at a given duration. Results of this study show that: (1) the rainfall-based DSI is able to capture periods of low flows as can be seen in its ability to represent major hydrological drought events as simulated by the flow-based DSI, (2) the rainfall-based DSIs generally represent moderate hydrological droughts better than extremes as shown by the smaller difference between the rainfall-based and the flow-based DSIs in terms of the statistics of the three drought characteristics and (3) there is a positive relationship between the time scale of DSI and the intensity (and duration) of the drought event it produces. As a secondary objective, the study has shown that the monthly gridded rainfall is a good proxy for monthly catchment rainfall and can therefore be considered a reliable dataset against which climate change experiments can be evaluated. The study concludes that the DSI is a credible index in estimating hydrological droughts. The strong positive correlation between the rainfall-based and the flow-based DSI time series suggests that changes and trends in rainfall-based DSIs can provide useful inferences for understanding changes in future hydrological droughts, as well as meteorological droughts. It is hoped that results from this study provide useful information when utilizing the DSI for assessment of drought impacts and future planning and management of water resources

21st Century Drought Scenarios for the UK

A 6-month drought severity index (DSI6) is applied to each of the 11-member perturbed-physics ensemble (HadRM3-PPE-UK) monthly precipitation dataset from 1950 to 2100 to investigate projected 21st century droughts in the UK. Four main drought characteristics are investigated: intensity, drought covariance, frequency of drought months and frequency of drought events at a given duration. Changes in these characteristics are analysed for 30-year periods: 1970-1999 (1980s), 2010-2039 (2020s), 2040-2069 (2050s) and 2070-2099 (2080s) and described in terms of their seasonal behaviour, for both moderate and extreme droughts. Projections of drought characteristics are expressed in the forms of ensemble-mean change relative to the 1980s and model consensus, and analysed over 23 water resource regions. In general, drought characteristics show profound increases (and widespread) for the 2050s and 2080s with larger change occurring during the wet season and under moderate drought conditions. Drought covariance sees greater increase during the dry season with greater change magnitude (but less widespread) under extreme drought conditions. Results also show that droughts can persist over long durations. However, the projected frequency of droughts at longer durations is low compared with droughts with shorter duration of persistence. Water resource regions (WWRs) mostly show negative change in drought characteristics, except for drought covariance. However, intensity and duration of droughts also generally increase over most of the WRRs in England, which are already highly exploited. Of particular relevance to water management, results from this ensemble have a strong influence on dry season water availability, especially in parts of England

Spatial coherence of meteorological droughts in the UK since 1914

We apply the drought severity index (DSI) on a multi-temporal basis to a monthly precipitation dataset to study the spatial coherence of meteorological droughts in the UK since 1914. Analyses are undertaken for the wet (OctoberMarch) and dry (AprilSeptember) seasons and for moderate and extreme drought severities. We develop a drought covariance index that allows us to quantify the spatial coherence of droughts based on the fraction of years with extreme (or moderate) droughts that each pair of grid points has in common. Results show greater coherence in (and more widespread) moderate, short duration and wet season droughts. Results are discussed in terms of the relationship between the North Atlantic Oscillation and precipitation, the spatial variability of precipitation and the detectability of droughts. Finally, we examine the implications of our study for drought management with a focus on water transfers

Testing climate models for agricultural impacts: recent trends, current projections, crop-climate suitability, and prospects for improved climate model information

Good climate projections for agriculture can help guide investments in risk management and adaptation. New reports offer insights into the reliability of future climate projections for agriculture, and show how to make the most of current data. Executive Summary Part 1, West Africa by Richard Washington & Matt Hawcroft Part 2, East Africa by Richard Washington & Helen Pearce Part 3, The Indo-Gangetic Plains by Mark New, Muhammad Rahiz & Jagadishwor Karmacharya Part 4, Progress in Climate Science Modelling: A Look Forward by Richard Washingto