According to recent innovative research, the UK has an annual 33% chance of a new monthly rainfall record in at least one region every winter period of October to March.

Rainfall events over the past few years have caused widespread flooding in various areas in the UK, such as the flooding experienced in many regions after a succession of storms hit the UK in winter 2013/14, leading to record rainfall. December 2015 brought similar weather patterns and the north-west was hit with widespread flooding and storm damage courtesy of Storm Desmond.

According to the Met Office, by their very nature extreme events are rare and a novel research method was needed to quantify the risk of extreme rainfall within the current climate.

“The new Met Office supercomputer was used to simulate thousands of possible winters, some of them much more extreme than we’ve yet witnessed. This gave many more extreme events than have happened in the real world, helping us work out how severe things could get,” said Professor Adam Scaife, who leads this area of research at the Met Office.

Analysis of simulated events showed a 7% risk of record monthly rainfall in the south east of England during any given winter, and when considering other areas of England and Wales, this rises to 34%.

Dr Vikki Thompson, lead author of the report, commented:

“Our computer simulations provided one hundred times more data than is available from observed records. Our analysis showed that these events could happen at any time and it’s likely we will see record monthly rainfall in one of our UK regions in the next few years”

The new research method, named the UNSEEN* method was also used for recent UK Government National Flood Resilience Review (NFRR)+ and it is predicted that it could also be utilised to assess other risks such as heatwaves, droughts, and cold spells.

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