Effect of Climate Change on River Flows and Groundwater Recharge UKCIP 02 Scenarios

This report presents a procedure for the rapid determination of the effects of climate change by the 2020s on mean monthly runoff and average annual groundwater recharge for strategic scale assessments. The procedure uses three core UKCIP02 scenarios, together with two scenarios characterising the effects of uncertainty and two representing natural climatic variability. Three approaches to translating these scenarios into changes in runoff and recharge are proposed. The report also gives examples of the effect of climate change on Q95, the flow exceeded 95% of the time, for a number of case study catchments.