Climate change and hydrology

Water-related issues are the most prominent amongst the commonly identified impacts of climate change. In particular, water-related extremes, storms, floods and droughts, are the likely most immediate and damaging manifestations of a changing climate. This chapter outlines how research into climate change impacts developed at CEH, introduces the key issues that have been encountered over the years and presents some examples of impact assessments. Moreover, the 11 global models were shown to reproduce relatively well the regional development of flood and drought episodes, which means they are useful tools to explore the impact of climate change on the hydrology at the regional to continental scale, not possible from catchment-scale models. The challenges of the future are many; climate change poses huge risks. Scientists have the responsibility to provide the best possible assessment of the science and associated risks to a, sometime, sceptical public and media.