Water extremes under change: from processes to impacts

A wide variety of processes controls characteristics of water extremes: river floods, droughts, episodes of detrimental streamwater quality. Understanding generation processes of these events may assist in uncovering their emergence and support the interpretation of their changes. Here I show how objective event identification and transferable causative classification frameworks are able to overcome the limitations of locally tailored approaches and detect functional changes in extremes over large spatial domains and long temporal scales.

To pave the way towards more efficient adaptation measures for extremes we need to understand intricate links between their hazard and impact components better. Here I demonstrate how different generation processes of extremes are interlinked with the adaptation efficiency, previous societal experiences and awareness uncovering how they might shape socio-economic impacts. The examples show how bridging across domains can help to improve our preparedness and anticipate future impacts.