BETWIXT

Built EnvironmenT: Weather scenarios for investigation of Impacts and eXTremes

Development of high-resolution weather scenarios
for the EPSRC/UKCIP BKCC initiative

Project contact:

Dr Clare Goodess Climatic Research Unit University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ

Telephone: 01603 592875 E-mail: c.goodess@uea.ac.uk

BETWIXT research partners

		Climatic Research Unit (CRU) Led by Clare Goodess - c.goodess@uea.ac.uk Clair Hanson - c.hanson@uea.ac.uk Phil Jones - p.jones@uea.ac.uk David Viner - d.viner@uea.ac.uk Matthew Watts - m.watts@uea.ac.uk
		Water Resource Systems Research Laboratory (WRSRL), University of Newcastle Led by Chris Kilsby - C.G.Kilsby@newcastle.ac.uk Enda O'Connell - p.e.o'connell@ncl.ac.uk Ahmad Moaven-Hashemi - ahmad.moaven-hashemi@ncl.ac.uk Hayley Fowler - h.j.fowler@ncl.ac.uk Aidan Burton - aidan.burton@ncl.ac.uk Michael Murray - m.g.murray@ncl.ac.uk
		Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research Richard Betts - richard.betts@metoffice.com Martin Best - martin.best@metoffice.com
	External science advisor: Rob Wilby - rob.wilby@environment-agency.gov.uk

BETWIXT short summary

BETWIXT will act as a service to the other EPSRC/UKCIP projects in the initiative, and develop best practice in the application of climate change scenarios. At the end of the project, the new data generated will be made more widely available.

BETWIXT final report

• The six-page narrative report submitted to the EPSRC

BETWIXT documents

• Extended project summary
• Description of the proposed research and its context including project work plan
• Summary of BETWIXT outputs

BETWIXT technical briefing notes

1. The CRU daily weather generator
2. Neyman-Scott rectangular pulses rainfall simulation system
3. Simulating climate change in urban areas: interactions between radiative forcing, landscape effects and heat sources
4. Validation of the CRU daily weather generator
5. Predicting future changes in wind plus Appendices
6. Relative impacts of radiative forcing, landscape effects and local heat sources on simulated climate change in urban areas
7. Description and validation of the CRU hourly weather generator

BETWIXT workshops

• Workshop programme
• List of participants
• Project handout
• Workshop summary
• Presentations:
  • Clare Goodess: Overview of the project and CRU weather generators
  • Chris Kilsby: Precipitation scenarios
  • Clair Hanson: Reliability of modelled wind data and scenario development
  • Clare Goodess: Case-study data

• Workshop programme
• Presentations:
  • Session One
    • Clare Goodess: An overview of BETWIXT: aims, objectives and deliverables/outputs
    • Clare Goodess: Constructing weather scenarios: an overview of issues/methods and the UKCIP02 scenarios
    • Matthew Watts: Daily and hourly weather scenarios for 10 UK sites: an overview of the CRU weather generator and scenarios
    • Chris Kilsby: The Newcastle specialist rainfall scenarios and software package
    • Richard Betts: Simulating climate change in urban areas
    • Clair Hanson: Predicting futures changes in wind
  • Session Two
    • Clare Goodess: How to access BETWIXT scenario data and software
    • Clare Goodess & Chris Kilsby: Issues relating to use of the BETWIXT scenario and data (including consistency with UKCIP02, consistency of the CRU and Newcastle scenarios, representativeness of the case-study locations
    • Chris Kilsby: How to run the Newcastle software package for producing specialist rainfall scenarios
• Project break-out group discussions - summary available from BKCC intranet

• Clare Goodess: The CRU daily weather generator developed for the BKCC programme

BETWIXT data

• Daily time-series output from the CRU weather generator
• Hourly time-series output from the CRU weather generator
• BADC data (Password-protected section for BKCC partners only)
  These daily and hourly datasets have been obtained through the British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC) for use by bona fide academic researchers working on BKCC projects. A terms and conditions form must be signed and returned to Clare Goodess (to Phil Jones between 1 July and 16 August 2004) by each academic institution before using the data. This form includes a declaration that the UK Met. Office Conditions of Use have been read and understood.
  • BKCC Terms and Conditions form
  • UK Met. Office Conditions of Use

• RainClim software (Password-protected section for BKCC partners only)
  You will need to fill out and return a licence form before you may download this. All queries should be directed to Chris Kilsby

Links

Relevant projects

• STARDEX (software for calculating indices of extremes can be downloaded from this website)
• SWURVE
• LINK
• Tyndall IT1.16: Estimating future probabilities of extreme weather events
• Tyndall IT1.8: How will changing temperature extremes affect buildings?
• World Health Organization, Europe: Heat-waves: risks and responses

Relevant Hadley Centre reports

• Climate change: observations and predictions (includes analysis of observed trends in the number of severe cyclonic storms over Western Europe)
• Handling uncertainties in the UKCIP02 scenarios of climate change Geoff Jenkins and Jason Lowe
• An initial estimate of the uncertainty in UK predicted climate change resulting from RCM formulation

IPCC Third Assessment summary reports

• WG1 Summary for Policymakers
• WG1 Technical Summary
• WG2 Summary for Policymakers
• WG2 Technical Summary

Data

• UKCIP02 scenarios gateway

Posters

• BETWIXT overview A0 poster