Synthetic weather generation for engineering design and infrastructure development

Professor Richard Chandler in UCL’s Department of Statistical Science developed a state-of-the-art software package for generating synthetic weather sequences.

Studies of future climate impacts and adaptation are invariably based around climate projections obtained by running global climate models (GCMs) under specified scenarios of socio-economic development and greenhouse gas emissions. However, GCM outputs are too coarse to represent the local-scale weather features that control some phenomena and must therefore be downscaled to provide application-relevant information.

Professor Richard Chandler’s research relates to methodology for developing “weather generators”: these are statistical models that exploit relationships between large-scale climate and local-scale weather, to enable the generation of local-scale sequences that are consistent with large-scale information from global climate models. 

The tools developed can be used at multiple locations, incorporating potential non-stationarities suitable for use in studies of climate impacts and adaptation where a detailed representation of local weather is required.

The theory is implemented in a software tool, R-package version of the Generalised Linear Model for daily Climate time series (RGLIMCLIM) which encourages a structured approach to weather generator construction and has proven to be efficient and flexible.

In Australia, this research has been used to inform climate change adaptation strategies and analyse rainfall trends, for example supporting the decision of the Western Australia Department of Water to double the capacity of the Binningup seawater desalination plant to 100 billion litres per year, at a cost of around A$450 million. The desalination plant continues to operate through this REF period at the increased capacity fulfilling approximately 30% of Perth's water supply requirements. 

Mott Macdonald is a global engineering, management and development consultancy, which has won $500,000 worth of contracts for three international projects in which the RGLIMCLIM software played a fundamental role in climate vulnerability assessment and in capturing climate change impacts. It has carried out a £44,000 pilot project for Anglian Water, successfully demonstrating that RGLIMCLIM can improve on standard industry practice in simulating changes in the frequency, duration and magnitude of droughts. 

The international contracts are for projects in Jamaica, Barbados, and Sierra Leone. These contracts benefit the consultants in terms of earned fees, and also the communities and civil agencies in regions where projects are being executed.

The Jamaica project was completed in 2019; the others are ongoing, due to delays that are partly due to COVID-19 which has prevented travel for fieldwork and site visits.

In Jamaica, the Essex Valley Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment was commissioned in 2019 by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries as part of the Essex Valley Agricultural Development Project (EVADP). The EVDAP aims to enhance the production and productivity of farmers in an area of around 1,000 hectares, in a socially inclusive, gender-equitable and climate-sensitive manner: it benefits approximately 150,000 people.

Links

• Professor Richard Chandler's academic profile
• UCL Department of Statistical Science 
• Department of Physics & Astronomy
• UCL Faculty of Maths & Physical Sciences
• UCL Faculty of Maths & Physical Sciences REF 21

Image 

• Image credit: iStock Elen11