In the current context of global change, assessing the impact of climate variability and changes on hydrological systems and water resources is increasingly crucial for society to better-adapt to future shifts in water resources as well as extreme conditions (floods and droughts). However, hitherto, important sources of uncertainties have been neglected in forecasting climate impacts on hydrological systems, especially uncertainties associated with internal/natural climate variability, whose contribution to near-future changes could be as important as forced anthropogenic climate changes at the regional scales. Internal climate modes of variability (e.g. ENSO, NAO, AMO) and their impact on the continent are not properly reproduced in the current global climate models, leading to large underestimations of decadal climate and hydroclimatic variability at the global scale. At the same time, hydrological response strongly depends on catchment properties, whose interactions with climate variability are little understood at the decadal timescales. These factors altogether reduce significantly our ability to understand long-term hydrological variability and to improve projection and reconstruction of future and past hydrological changes on which improvement of adaption scenarios depends.

We welcome abstracts capturing recent insights for understanding past or future impacts of large-scale climate variability on hydrological systems and water resources as well as newly developed projection and reconstruction scenarios. Results from model intercomparison studies are encouraged.