UWaRes - Uncertain Water Resources under global change

Pressure on water resources has been increasing globally due to rising demand for food and energy, perpetual economic growth and improving living standards. Climate change further complicates water resource availability, and conflicting interests in allocating limited water resources among industries, households, and agriculture prevent a fair share of the available resources at the expense of the environment. How can we, as scientists, effectively assist future water planning while water managers are often confronted with insufficient and inaccessible data and models, high uncertainties, and vague scenarios?

The Helmholtz Young Investigator Group UWaRes at GERICS addresses these shortcomings by combining process-focused climate and impact-focused water resources models, guided by the practical challenges experienced by end-users and water managers. The group pursues the collaborative implementation of water use into a regional climate model that enables coupled assessments of the water use-climate feedback. The group utilizes a broad range of available climate data to assess present conditions and future changes in the availability of green and blue water resources. The central objective of this project is to understand and simulate interactions between human water use and regional climates. The following specific objectives frame the project and constitute work packages:

1. Develop a socio-hydrological impact tool coupled with a state-of-the-art regional climate model at a high spatial resolution to investigate the potential benefits of incorporating realistic water management into climate models.

2. Provide an end-user-driven perspective on analysing available climate data to enhance our understanding of projected changes and uncertainties in green and blue water resources and their sensitivities to different drivers.

3. Provide a systematic and process-based evaluation of simulated regional climate-hydrology feedback processes to assess the coupled impacts of extensive water use.

4. Engage with end-users to create scenarios that illustrate both climate sensitivities and feedback mechanisms and adaptation and mitigation potentials.

To the UWaRes projekt website

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