A hybrid physical-statistical model for very extreme rainfall statistics will be crtically examined. This model will be tested against mesoscale model simulations and its limitations explored numerically. In particular two hypotheses will be examined. The first hypotheis is that regional simulations of very extreme rainfall are consistent with the proposed hybrid model. The second hypothisis is that the hybrid model is suitable for finite time periods and can be adjusted for non-stationary parameters.

Project Duration: January 2008 - January 2010.

This project is funded by NERC - Grant Ref. NE/F011822/1 - through the Flood Risk for Extreme Events (FREE) NERC directed mode programme

This project will critically examine a hybrid physical-statistical model for very extreme rainfall statistics and test it against two hypotheses.

This study will use the Met Office UM model forced by operational analyses as a control run to model the July 2007 storm and then simulate humidity perturbations to explore the assumptions of the hybrid model. The project will also study model convergence and sensitivity to record length.

No new data sets will be archived by this project although output or initialization conditions from notable UM model runs such as those used in publications- should be preserved.

The data from this project will be stored at the BADC.

• Imperial College London website - http://www.imperial.ac.uk/
  
• NERC - http://www.nerc.ac.uk/

FREE Programme documentation:

• List of projects funded under the FREE programme.
• FREE Science Plan
• FREE Implementation Plan (January 2008)
• FREE Progress Report (May 2008)
• FREE Progress Report (Oct 2008)
• Data Inputs to FREE projects

This FREE project is headed by Prof Ralf Toumi of Imperial College London. General queries about these pages or browsing the data should be directed to the BADC support line.