While decades of climate change research have sought to project Earth’s future climate, paleo-reconstruction research has simultaneously expanded our perspective of Earth’s climate into the distant past, well beyond the observed record. Hydrologic reconstructions can be an invaluable tool, providing greater context for recent observations and future hydroclimatological conditions. For example, reconstructions can be used to characterize extreme events with centuries-long recurrence intervals or to establish a baseline of natural hydrologic variability for non-stationarity studies. However, with this growing opportunity comes the challenge of bridging past reconstruction data with modern observations and future climate scenarios. Merging the past, present, and future often involves bringing together multiple research disciplines and consolidating datasets with different spatial or temporal scales and based on different fundamental assumptions.
This interdisciplinary session is designed to bring together experts from disparate fields (hydrology, climatology, dendrology, geology, history, and atmospheric sciences) to discuss the challenges and opportunities of linking paleo-hydrology with modern observations and future hydrologic projections. We invite submissions from a breadth of fields with a focus on hydrology, including those discussing reconstruction of surface flows or storage, isotope analysis of water sources, and natural hazards related to water, such as drought, flooding, or erosional landslides. We are particularly interested in submissions discussing the value of historical reconstructions in a non-stationary climate, novel methods for hydrologic comparisons across long time scales, and approaches to improve the utility and visibility of such data for water stakeholders and decision-makers.