• NERC Data Catalogue Service
  •  
  •  
  •  

Flood Risk for Extreme Events (FREE): Historical Rainfall Data and Maps from the Quantifying Flood Risk of Extreme Events using Density Forecasts Based on a New Digital Archive and Weather Ensemble Predictions Project

The Quantifying Flood Risk of Extreme Events using Density Forecasts Based on a New Digital Archive and Weather Ensemble Predictions Project is a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Flood Risk for Extreme Events (FREE) Research Programme project (Round 1 - NE/E002013/1 - Duration January 2007 - December 2008) led by Dr Patrick McSharry, University of Oxford. The dataset contains a collection of rainfall depth maxima data, dating back to 1860, plus associated description documents and rainfall maps of extreme events across the UK, have been used. All of these products have been digitised from the paper version of the British Rainfall publication, and are now archived at the BADC to enable easy access for future use and the wider community.

Floods in the UK are often caused by heavy rainfall lasting from minutes to weeks. Efficient management and mitigation of flood risk, especially surface water flooding in urban areas, requires accurate and reliable precipitation forecasts as inputs to flood risk models. Houses in flat areas are particularly at risk and meeting the shortage of houses in the south-east requires building on these areas. To estimate the flood hazard risk in order to try to protect these buildings, accurate rainfall predictions are needed. However, the connection between record rainfall and flooding is highly nonlinear, so that rainfall predictions must also say how likely rainfall is at any time - calculating the probability of rainfall.

Extreme rainfalls caused devastating floods in Boscastle in 2004 and Lynmouth in 1952, but the causes and pattern of rainfall was different. Therefore, scientists also need to know what pattern of rainfall caused the flooding.

This research aims to get good quality predictions of the probability of rainfall by combining advanced methods from statistics, the output from a new supercomputer model of the weather, and a new computer archive of exteme rainfalls going back to 1866 (and up to 1968), provided by a specialist company Hydro-GIS Ltd. It also aims to produce an automatic system for discovering the most likely pattern in the predicted rainfalls. The new prediction system and data will be freely available over the internet for use by the government and universities.

Simple

Date (Publication)
2008-12-10T03:19:22
Date (Creation)
2008-12-10T03:19:22
Identifier
https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/108ec79af9ede50c5438d1b4574281da
Identifier
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) / 108ec79af9ede50c5438d1b4574281da
Author
  Hydro-GIS Ltd - author
Author
  NERC FREE Campaign participants - author
Author
  Unavailable - McSharry, Patrick ( author )
Author
  Unavailable - Rodda, Harvey ( author )
Custodian
  NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) - custodian
British Atmospheric Data Centre , STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell Oxford , OX11 0QX , UK
+44(0)1235 446432
Distributor
  NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) - distributor
British Atmospheric Data Centre , STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell Oxford , OX11 0QX , UK
+44(0)1235 446432
pointofContact
  NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) - point_of_contact
British Atmospheric Data Centre , STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell Oxford , OX11 0QX , UK
+44(0)1235 446432
Publisher
  NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) - publisher
British Atmospheric Data Centre , STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell Oxford , OX11 0QX , UK
+44(0)1235 446432
Maintenance and update frequency
unknown Unknown
Update scope
series Series
Keywords
  • FREE
  • Rainfall
  • Maps
GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
  • atmospheric conditions
Access constraints
otherRestrictions Other restrictions
Other constraints
Please contact the data centre for assistance on accessing data from this dataset collection.
Use constraints
otherRestrictions Other restrictions
Other constraints
Under the following licence http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/, appropriate use of these data may fall under any use. This message is intended as guidance, always read the full licence. When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record.
Spatial representation type
grid Grid
Metadata language
EnglishEnglish
Topic category
  • Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere
N
S
E
W
thumbnail


Begin date
1867-01-01T00:00:00
End date
1968-12-30T23:00:00
Unique resource identifier
WGS 84
Distribution format
  • Contact data centre for format details. ()

Distributor
  NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) - Data Center Contact
British Atmospheric Data Centre , STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell Oxford , OX11 0QX , UK
+44(0)1235 446432
OnLine resource
CEDA Data Catalogue Page

Detail and access information for the resource

OnLine resource
Flooding in north Cornwall - 16 August 2004

No further details.

OnLine resource
Hydro-GIS

No further details.

OnLine resource
A digital archive of extreme rainfalls in the British Isles from 1866 to 1968 based on British Rainfall

No further details.

OnLine resource
FREE Projects and Contacts

No further details.

OnLine resource
The science of flooding

No further details.

OnLine resource
Implementation Plan

No further details.

OnLine resource
Summary Progress Report May 2008

No further details.

OnLine resource
Other FREE Projects

No further details.

OnLine resource
Instructions for FREE data providers

No further details.

OnLine resource
An Overview of Extreme Rainfall Events from the British Rainfall Archive 1866-1968.

No further details.

OnLine resource
Data inputs to FREE projects

No further details.

OnLine resource
Progress Report October 2008

No further details.

Hierarchy level
series Series

Conformance result

Date (Publication)
2010-12-08
Statement
Please see data lineage statements for each dataset within this collection for data lineage details.
File identifier
108ec79af9ede50c5438d1b4574281da XML
Metadata language
EnglishEnglish
Character set
8-bit variable size UCS Transfer Format, based on ISO/IEC 10646 UTF8
Hierarchy level
series Series
Hierarchy level name
series
Date stamp
2025-11-15T03:26:36
Metadata standard name
UK GEMINI
Metadata standard version
2.3
Point of contact
  NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)
British Atmospheric Data Centre , STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell Oxford , OX11 0QX , UK
+44(0)1235 446432
 
 

Overviews

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W
thumbnail


Keywords

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
atmospheric conditions

Provided by

logo

Share on social sites

Access to the portal
Read here the full details and access to the data.

Associated resources

Not available


  •  
  •  
  •