Dry drier drought – Understanding drought in a changing society and climate

Droughts have major economic, social and environmental impacts around the world, and they are expected to increase in severity and magnitude because of changes in climate and its variability. In recent years we have seen incredible developments in the field of drought research and we have significantly improved our understanding of this complex phenomenon. While observations have become more abundant, we have also seen significant improvements in hydrological models that are better constrained by these observations. These model improvements also include the addition of new, relevant processes, needed to fully understand drought feedbacks.

In this talk I will discuss my experience with modeling drought at larger scales and including human-water interactions at these scales. These models are also used to study the impact of climate change on drought and show the impact of rising temperatures on society’s exposure to these impactful events. Spatial resolutions of hydrological models have improved significantly and the complexity of processes that we are able to simulate has increased, leading to exciting new insights. At the same time, we have to communicate these findings with not only the scientific community, but also the general public. This brings new challenges for scientists and affects our science.

I’ll highlight recent advances in the field of drought research and hydrological modelling, as well as frontiers and interesting developments in the field. I’ll mention some key challenges that we still have to face to better understand the impact and feedbacks of extreme hydroclimatic events.