Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Water stewardship in the twenty-first century

Nature Climate Change volume 4, pages 311–313 (2014)Cite this article

Subjects

The impacts of extreme weather are being felt by us all and scientific research points to a likely worsening of weather patterns in the next decades. Therefore, it is imperative to think carefully about how we build the infrastructure of the future to increase the resilience of our societies.

Over the past three years the UK has experienced some of the most varied and extreme weather events and seasonal trends ever recorded. We may not be able to link these directly to climate change, but since 2011 we have seen examples of precisely the type of extreme conditions that climate projections suggest are likely to be the norm in the future. Are we preparing well to cope with these changes? Will our water infrastructure meet the changing pressures and demands? Will our landscape be resilient and able to buffer extreme weather? As communities, are we willing to adapt our behaviour to a changing climate? These are questions that we all need to urgently consider.

This is a preview of subscription content

Access options

Rent or Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

from$8.99

Rent or Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Water-level extremes in the UK.

References

  1. 1

    Annual Report and Account 2013 (Anglian Water, 2013); http://go.nature.com/nhgvQT

  2. 2

    UK Climate Change Risk Assessment 2012 — Water Sector Summary (Defra, 2012); http://go.nature.com/lhFyEl

  3. 3

    UK Climate Change Risk Assessment 2012 — Floods and Coastal Erosion Summary (Defra, 2012); http://go.nature.com/lhFyEl

  4. 4

    Water Water Everywhere, encouraging collaboration and building partnerships. Guardian infographics (July/August 2013); http://go.nature.com/24Ibuw

  5. 5

    Agriculture in the English Regions 2012 — 2nd Estimate with Revision (Defra, 2014); http://go.nature.com/LpSZF8

  6. 6

    Water Resource Management Plan 2014 (Anglian Water, 2014); http://go.nature.com/wOzCJM

  7. 7

    Observatory Monitoring Framework — Indicator Data Sheet (UK Government, 2014); http://go.nature.com/7SA6CB

Download references

Author information

Affiliations

  1. Peter Simpson is at Anglian Water Services Ltd, Anglian House, Ambury Road, Huntingdon PE29 3NZ, UK

    Peter Simpson

Authors
  1. Peter Simpson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Peter Simpson.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Simpson, P. Water stewardship in the twenty-first century. Nature Clim Change 4, 311–313 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2217

Download citation

Further reading

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing