To what degree can the October-November 2000 flood events be attributed to climate change?

A project investigating the extent to which the flooding in October and November 2000 was caused by climate change.

• From: Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Research and Development Programme, Met Office and Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs
• Published: 12 February 2021

• Category: Understanding risks from all sources of flooding
• Topics: Climate change, Decision making with uncertainty, Flood forecasting, Flood risk assessment, Meteorology, Recovery, Understanding physical processes
• Project status: Completed
• Project code: FD2304
• Date of completion: 31 March 2004

Documents

To what degree can the October-November 2000 flood events be attributed to climate change? Final report (1 MB) PDF

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Details

This report presents the findings of a study carried out by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) and the Met Office. It investigates the extent to which the flooding in October and November 2000 was unusual and the degree to which the flooding was caused by climate change.

This research shows that the floods in October and November 2000 were unusual. It also shows that there are few other recorded examples of the same extent and duration of flooding. However, it’s impossible to say whether a single weather event is caused by climate change by looking only at that event.

This research proposes investigating how often these kinds of events happen and how severe they are, along with outputs from climate models. This is to see whether this predicts changes in the extremes of rainfall that could produce floods.

This project ran from 2000 to 2001 at a cost of £92,172.

Published 12 February 2021