Abstract: Short-duration rainfall extremes can cause serious damage to infrastructure and loss of life through rapidly developing flash floods. These are intensifying with warming at a rate consistent with, or higher than, atmospheric moisture increase, increasing the incidence of flash flooding at local scales, particularly in urban areas. These findings call for urgent measures to manage increasing flood risks, including rethinking the ways climate change is incorporated into flood estimation guidance.#
Bio: Professor of Climate Change Impacts in the School of Engineering at Newcastle University, her research focuses on improved physical understanding of changing precipitation extremes and providing better projections for climate adaptation to flood risks. She has pioneered new downscaling techniques to bridge the gap between climate modellers and users of climate scenarios (e.g. UKCP09 Weather Generator). She is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (2018) and a Royal Society Wolfson Fellow (2014-19). She led the GEWEX Hydroclimatology Panel sub-daily precipitation cross-cut and is Chief Editor of Frontiers in Interdisciplinary Climate Studies. She is a Contributing Author to two chapters of the IPCC 6th Assessment Report WGI and Chapter 1 of the UK CCRA3. She is British Hydrological Society President Elect, on the Expert panel for the EA’s Boosting Action in Surface Water: Plausible Extremes and on the Governance Board of the Flood Hydrology Roadmap. She advises government through her roles on the Strategic Advisory Board for RESAS Science and on the BEIS Science Expert Group.