Exploiting km-scale climate projections to provide new insights into changing convective hazards in UK, Europe and Africa

At the UK Met Office, recent advances in km-scale climate modelling include the first continuous 100-year ensemble projections at 2.2km resolution over the UK ( ‘UKCP Local’), and 4.5km ensemble projections over Africa. In this talk I will highlight new understanding of changes in heavy rainfall, convective storm hazards and tropical cyclones, with implications for flooding and adaptation planning. This includes insights into the interplay between natural variability and climate change, and the factors leading to apparent rapid transitions in the occurrence of local rainfall extremes through time. Over Europe, new understanding includes changes in severe convective storms and hail, that contrast with previous studies based on environmental proxies from coarser resolution climate models. Over Africa, km-scale models are able to capture the most intense tropical cyclones, providing a key advance in our modelling capability. This is showing that we need to be prepared for Category 5 tropical cyclones making landfall over Africa and the potential for landfall at southerly latitudes, both of which are unprecedented in the historical record.