Impacts of Climatic Change on River Flow Regimes in the UK

Much has been written in recent years about the potential threats posed by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. This paper summarizes the implications of global warming for hydrological processes in general and river flow characteristics in the UK in particular, emphasizing the present high degree of uncertainty. Current climate change scenarios for the UK imply that rainfall between autumn and spring will increase, and this may have beneficial implications for UK water resources. However, the effect of this increase may be outweighed by higher evapotranspiration. Average annual runoff in a catchment in southern UK may be reduced by around 5% by the middle of the next century, but this estimate is very uncertain: runoff may reduce by 30% or increase by 30%. Runoff in northern and western UK is likely to show a slight increase (but with similarly large confidence intervals). It is probable that river flows in the UK will be much more concentrated in winter than at present. The effect of a given climate change scenario on monthly flow regimes depends on the current summer water balance and on catchment geological conditions.