Hydrological systems are very sensitive to changes in climate. For instance, recent and future increased temperatures are expected to increase potential evapotranspiration and possible complex changes in rainfall variability and event distributions which can impact on soil moisture, streamflow, groundwater recharge, magnitude/frequency of fluvial floods and droughts. Such a hydrological impact of climate can be assessed by forcing hydrological models with high-resolution simulations, i.e., at a catchment scale, from downscaled global climate models. However, hydrological systems are also influenced by ocean-atmosphere modes of climate variability (e.g., ENSO, NAO and AMO), whose the continental impacts are not well reproduced in the current state-of-the-art global climate models. This reduces significantly our capacity to project future changes of hydrological systems and, thus, of water resources.

This session therefore solicits abstracts on research providing new approaches or insights into understanding the impacts of large-scale climate variability on hydrological systems, and their potential predictabilities. Results from large scale data analyses and model intercomparison studies are welcome.