New evidence on observed and attributable changes in water cycle means and extremes: From regional to global scale

Water cycle changes, including changes in droughts, heavy precipitation and floods, count among the most impactful consequences of human-induced climate change. This includes several changes in water cycle extremes on regional scale (Seneviratne et al. 2021; Seneviratne et al., in preparation), as well as changes in global water cycle patterns (Fisch et al. in preparation). In addition, some subregional trends can also be now detected, such as in Switzerland for streamflow and soil moisture drought (Haddad et al. 2024, Hirschi et al. submitted).

This presentation will provide an overview of on-going studies and recent articles on the attribution of regional to global changes in the land water cycle, including new emerging evidence suggesting more detectable and attributable signals of changes in water cycle extremes compared to the assessment of the 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Seneviratne et al. 2021).

 

References:

Fisch, C., D.L. Schumacher, L. Gudmundsson, and S.I. Seneviratne, in preparation: Detecting an externally forced signal in observed terrestrial water storage.

Haddad, Y.Y, L. Gudmundsson, J. Savelsberg, J.B. Garrison, E. Raycheva, T. Wechsler, M. Zappa, G. Hug, and S.I. Seneviratne, 2025: Recent climate impacts on run-of-river hydropower and electricity systems planning in Switzerland. Environ. Res. Lett., 20, 084020.

Hirschi, M., D. Michel, D.L. Schumacher, W. Preimesberger and S.I. Seneviratne, in review: Recent summer soil moisture drying in Switzerland based on measurements from the SwissSMEX network. Earth System Data Discuss. [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-416, in review, 2025.

Seneviratne, S.I., X. Zhang, M. Adnan, W. Badi, C. Dereczynski, A. Di Luca, S. Ghosh, I. Iskandar, J. Kossin, S. Lewis, F. Otto, I. Pinto, M. Satoh, S.M. Vicente-Serrano, M. Wehner, and B. Zhou, 2021: Weather and Climate Extreme Events in a Changing Climate. In Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S.L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M.I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J.B.R. Matthews, T.K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu, and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 1513–1766, doi:10.1017/9781009157896.013.

Seneviratne, S.I. et al., in preparation: Extreme climate events from past to future: A 5-year update since the IPCC AR6 report. Manuscript in preparation.