The full programme will be available here in due course.

The distinguished Penman Lecture will be given by Professor Zbyszek Kundzewicz of Institute for Agricultural and Forest Environment, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poznań, Poland and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany.

Climate change, freshwater resources and hydrological risk

Climate system and freshwater resources are intimately interwoven, so that every change in one of these systems results in a change in another one. The impacts of climate change on freshwater systems are mainly due to increases in temperature, sea level and precipitation variability, and to other precipitation changes. This review paper puts climate change impact on freshwater resources and hydrological risk in perspective, including recent post-IPCC-AR4 research.

There has been an ubiquitous, and increasing, evidence of warming, but precipitation changes are less regular, even if increases over land north of 30°N since the 1900s and decreases over land between 10°S and 30°N after the 1970s have been observed. An increasing probability of heavy precipitation events for extra-tropical regions was found.

Detection of change in rainfall and river flow is inherently difficult, because of the low signal-to-noise ratio. The relatively weak climate change signal is superimposed on a strong natural variability, under a confounding effect of anthropogenic factors, such as changes in watersheds and rivers. Hence, statistically robust trends (e.g. in low or high river discharges) are hard to find now and are unlikely to be found in near future.

Climate projections using multi-model ensembles indicate increases in globally averaged precipitation over the 21st century, but precipitation scenarios show strong regional and seasonal differences. Wetter winters are expected throughout the European continent, while in summer, projected precipitation change differs between northern Europe (getting wetter) and southern Europe (getting drier). However, various climate models do not consistently project precipitation change, disagreeing even as to the sign of change. In consequence, projected direction of change of river discharge, for a time horizon of concern, is not consistent across different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios and climate models.

It is clear that the high uncertainty in future projections related to river flow grows with the remoteness of the future time horizon of interest. In the near-term, climate model uncertainties play a dominant role, while over longer time horizons, uncertainties due to emission scenarios may become increasingly significant. Uncertainty in hydrological projections is also due to a spatial-scale mismatch between coarse-resolution climate models and the smaller scale of drainage basins, rendering downscaling necessary.

According to projections, floods and droughts that were 100-year events in the control period, may become more frequent or less frequent in the future, changed, climate. In the former case, upgrade of preparedness systems would be needed in order to assure the necessary protection level. Discussion of recent projections is presented.

Due to large uncertainty, projections may only serve as illustrations of broad features of possible futures, so that it is not possible to deliver a meaningful quantitative information, expected by practitioners and decision makers, who are responsible for local-scale adaptation.

Water resources systems are designed and operated on the basis of the assumption of stationarity (the past is a key to the future. Since this assumption is clearly incorrect due to non-climatic (e.g. land cover) and climatic changes, the existing design procedures have to be revised. Otherwise, systems would be under- or overdesigned and either not serve their purpose adequately or be overly costly. In some countries, despite large uncertainty of projections, water managers have begun to consider the early climate change warning explicitly in hydrological design codes.

Abstracts have been invited to the following sessions:

Climate Change and Hydrological Risk

Professor Chris Kilsby, Newcastle University

Professor Rob Wilby, Loughborough University

Flood Risk Management

Professor Ian Cluckie, Swansea University

Professor Jim Hall, Newcastle University

Groundwater Hydrology for a Changing Environment

Dr. Tara LaForce, Imperial College London

Dr. Simon Matthias, Durham University

Hydroecology and Ecohydrology

Dr. Andy Large, Newcastle University

Dr. Paul Wood, Loughborough University

Hydrological Prediction, Forecasting and Uncertainty

Professor Enda O’Connell, Newcastle University

Professor Ezio Todini, University of Bologna 

Hydrological Processes

Dr. James Bathurst, Newcastle University

Hydrology and the Community

Professor Malcom Newson, Tyne Rivers Trust

Dr. Jeroen Warner, University of Twente

Dr. Nigel Watson, Lancaster Environment Centre

Integrated Catchment Science

Dr. Sean Burke, Environment Agency

Dr. Ir. Ioana Popescu, UNESCO-IHE Institute of Water Education

Dr. Paul Quinn, Newcastle University

Remote Sensing, Hydrometry and Data Assimilation

Dr. Andrew Black, University of Dundee

Professor Robert Gurney, University of Reading

Dr. Guy Schumann, University of Bristol

Water Resources Management

Professor Mike Acreman, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology

Dr. Bayo Adeloye, Herriot-Watt University

Professor Dan Rosbjerg, Technical University of Denmark