Use of high-resolution NWP rainfall and river flow forecasts for advance warning of the Carlisle flood, north-west England

Roberts, Nigel M.; Cole, Steven J.; Forbes, Richard M.; Moore, Robert J.; Boswell, Daniel. 2009 Use of high-resolution NWP rainfall and river flow forecasts for advance warning of the Carlisle flood, north-west England. Meteorological Applications, 16 (1). 23-44. https://doi.org/10.1002/met.94

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Abstract/Summary

On the 8 January 2005 the city of Carlisle in northwest England was severely flooded following two days of almost continuous rain over the nearby hills. Orographic enhancement of the rain through the seeder-feeder mechanism led to the very high rainfall totals. This paper shows the impact of running the Met Office Unified Model (UM) with a grid spacing of 4 and 1 km compared to the 12 km available at the time of the event. These forecasts, and forecasts from the Nimrod nowcasting system, were fed into the Probability Distributed Model (PDM) to predict river flow at the outlets of two catchments important for flood warning. The results show the benefit of increased resolution in the UM, the benefit of coupling the high-resolution rainfall forecasts to the PDM and the improvement in timeliness of flood warning that might have been possible.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1002/met.94
Programmes:	CEH Programmes pre-2009 publications > Water > WA01 Water extremes > WA01.1 New methodologies to quantify floods, flows and droughts
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Boorman (to September 2014)
ISSN:	1350-4827
Additional Keywords:	High-resolution NWP, hydrological modelling, flood forecasting, orographic rainfall
NORA Subject Terms:	Meteorology and Climatology Earth Sciences Hydrology Atmospheric Sciences
Date made live:	21 May 2009 14:35 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/3811

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