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Where should hydrology go?
Last May, the Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group organized a tour along several European hydrological institutes in an attempt to compensate for the negative impact of the covid pandemic on networking and scientific exchange. During the tour, discussions were held to discuss the future of hydrology from the perspective of early-career hydrologists. The International …
Ecosystems get increasingly thirsty due to climate change
A new study shows that future ecosystem functioning will increasingly depend on water availability. Using recent simulations from climate models, an international team of scientists found several “hot spot regions” where increasing water limitation strongly affects ecosystems. These include Central Europe, the Amazon, and western Russia. Pinpointing such regions is essential: Healthy ecosystems are vital for …
Global tree restoration will change water availability
Tree restoration is an effective way to store atmospheric carbon and mitigate climate change. Many initiatives exist to increase global tree cover. However, the effects of these initiatives on water resources are still poorly understood. Locally, tree restoration will enhance evaporation. But impacts on precipitation reach far beyond country or even continent level: tree restoration …
Drought makes heatwaves hotter, but less deadly
During heatwaves, there is no rain and the soil dries out. This further enhances the rising of heatwave temperatures. But remarkably, desiccated soils also have an advantage: they reduce air humidity and make a heatwave less deadly to humans. Heatwaves and droughts are causing acute excess mortality and damage to society worldwide. The number of …
Boussinesq award for drought research
The Boussinesq Board has recently announced that Ryan Teuling is the Boussinesq Awardee 2021. Every two years the Boussinesq Center for Hydrology awards this Boussinesq Award to a mid-career scientist who contributed with innovative research of great importance for the further development of hydrology as a scientific discipline. According to the board, Ryan’s research has advanced …
PhD defense Joost Buitink
On 20 October 2021, Joost Buitink will defend his PhD thesis entitled “Capturing hydrological variability – Spatio-temporal aspects of the Rhine basin” Dealing with spatio-temporal variability in hydrological processes and states is a major challenge in hydrology. In his thesis, Joost has investigated different elements of variability, with emphasis on evapotranspiration and extreme events (droughts …
Reducing drought by changing the surface water system
Experiences from recent droughts show that elevated sandy areas in the southern and eastern Netherlands are vulnerable to drought (see e.g. Buitink et al., 2020). Transporting water to these areas is difficult due to their elevation and distance to river systems. In addition, the use of surface water for functions such as drinking water supply, …
Increasing soil drought drives Western European summer warming
European summers have become warmer in the last decades. To mitigate further warming, we have to better understand the cause of these increasing temperatures. In a recent study, Stegehuis et al. (2021) quantified the contribution of both decreasing soil moisture and atmospheric circulation to summer warming and summer heatwave events. Soil moisture conditions play and …
Future runoff changes in Switzerland
Runoff from the Swiss mountains is important for hydropower, but also for water availability in Switzerland and many other downstream countries including The Netherlands. In two recent papers, Muelchi and co-workers investigated runoff under future changes in temperature and precipitation. Runoff in mountainous areas is highly sensitive to temperature, precipitation, as well as the combination …

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