Climate Change Adaptation in the U.K. Water Industry: Managers' Perceptions of Past Variability and Future Scenarios

In this article, the relationship between U.K. watercompanies' perceptions of past climatic extremes andtheir effect on resilience to future climatic changeis explored. Perceptions and activities related topast and future dry periods was investigated throughinterviews with managers at the ten major English andWelsh water supply/sewerage companies, and severalsmaller, water-only companies. Several of thecompanies report that they have observed a trendtowards drier summers in their regions, and a number of companies say that they have observed a changetowards more intensive rainfall of shorter duration. Recent supply measures in a number of regions havebeen aimed at improving storage and distributionrelated to the perceived change in rainfall intensity.A new requirement to incorporate regional climatechange scenarios in future supply assumptions appearsto have had little impact on planning in the region todate. Many water resource planners believe that thescenarios generated are too aggregated and do notencourage a precautionary approach to planning. Somemanagers believe that records of historical droughtconditions, such as experienced in 1933/1934 or 1995/1996,as worst-case scenarios provide a better basis for planning.