Use of very high resolution climate model data for hydrological modelling in southern Britain

Previous work driving hydrological models directly with data from regional climate models (RCMs) used data on an approximately 25x25km grid, which generally required some form of further downscaling before use by hydrological models. Recently, higher resolution data have become available from a NERC Changing Water Cycle project, CONVEX. As part of that project the Met Office Hadley Centre has run a very high resolution (1.5km) RCM, nested in a 12km RCM driven by ERA-Interim boundary conditions (1989-2008). They have also run baseline and future climate scenarios, nesting the RCMs in a global climate model. The 12km RCM runs cover Europe, while the 1.5km RCM runs only cover southern Britain.