Sub-seasonal weather forecasting project

The sub-seasonal weather forecasting project will help:

Improve water companies’ understanding of weather impact on water and wastewater management
Develop a reliable weather impact-based modelling and forecasting system. It will forecast impactful weather events beyond the standard 10-14 days, up to 4-6 weeks ahead
Aid resourcing and operational management capabilities. This will be for areas at risk from severe weather events

More and more we are seeing the devastating impact of extreme weather events across the country. To help the water industry meet the challenges due to climate change, it is vital we have the tools to better forecast weather patterns and adapt our infrastructure and resources for the benefit of our customers

Ian Savage

Strategic Control Manager (London), Thames Water

How the project will work

The project is in partnership with the Met Office and other partner UK water companies. We are using the Decider tool developed by the Met Office. It's a forecasting system that can be used to predict large-scale weather patterns over the UK.

If a weather pattern is linked to business impact, we can use the Decider weather forecast. This will be combined with the probability of seeing impacts for a given weather pattern. It will then communicate the risk of this occurring. This will enable more informed decisions rather than climatology, or estimated predictions.

The project will build on a previously developed sub-seasonal water demand model. The model is fine-tuned to tailor it for the benefit of each participating water company.

In parallel, the project will explore wastewater applications for sub-seasonal forecasting. It will develop a model that increases the predictability of alarm volumes. This is in order to improve operational management decision-making for wastewater.