DROUGHT-HEAT
Land-Climate Interactions: Constraints for Droughts and Heatwaves in a Changing Climate
Land-Climate Interactions: Constraints for Droughts and Heatwaves in a Changing Climate
published: March 1, 2020
The ERC project DROUGHT-HEAT has finished. This site is no longer updated.
For current projects, please refer to the Land-Climate Dynamics website.
published: Feb. 28, 2020
We warmly congratulate Kathrin on successfully defending her doctoral thesis today on "On the sensitivity of heat waves to physical drivers and climate change".
published: Nov. 11, 2019
This study led by Clemens Schwingshackl explains why regional climate models project a smaller temperature increase than global climate models.
Read the full article published in ERL.
published: Nov. 6, 2019
A new study led by Kathrin Wehrli provides new insights to the key drivers of major recent heatwaves. For 5 investigated heatwaves, soil moisture and atmospheric circulation are equally important for the resulting temperature anomalies.
Read the full article published in JGR Atmospheres.
published: May 28, 2019
The updated version of the scaling atlas is available here: Scaling Atlas Based on Wartenburger et al. 2017 regional changes in climate with respect to global mean temperatures can be explored.
published: April 15, 2019
The Carbon-Water coupling workshop is taking place the next three days at ETH Zurich. Its goal is to assess the stand of research on carbon-water interactions, in particular with respect to possible global-scale effects of droughts and heatwaves on atmospheric CO2 in both present and future. The workshop consists of ... >> read more
published: April 9, 2019
Without the climate change caused by human activity, simultaneous heatwaves would not have hit such a large area as they did last summer. This is the conclusion of researchers at ETH Zurich based on observational and model data.
Read more in the associated ETH news article.
published: March 18, 2019
We warmly congratulate Heewon on successfully defending her doctoral thesis today on "Precipitation and drought persistence in global climate models".
published: Feb. 17, 2019
A new study from Heewon Moon provides an comprehensive assessment of soil moisture-precipitation feedbacks in a large ensemble of global climate model simulations. They investigate how afternoon rainfall occurrence is affected by morning soil moisture conditions.
Read the full article published in GRL.
published: Dec. 5, 2018
Congratulations on the defense of Martha Vogel. The doctoral thesis on "Temperature extremes in a changing climate – Processes, emergent constraints and impacts" can be downloaded here: ETH Research Collection .
published: Aug. 29, 2018
We have shown that during drier years the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rises faster because stressed ecosystems absorb less carbon. This global effect is so strong that it must be integrated in the next generation of climate models.
Read more in the associated ETH news article.
published: Jan. 29, 2018
Unploughed fields and brighter cities could help to noticeably lower extreme temperatures during periods of hot weather, particularly in important agricultural regions and densely populated areas of Europe and North America.
Read more in the associated ETH news article
published: April 12, 2017
>> read more
published: March 7, 2017
Our findings on the contribution of soil moisture-atmosphere feedbacks to the warming of extreme temperatures can be watched online: Video link. The complete article can be accessed here: https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL071235 .
published: Oct. 1, 2016
Kathrin Wehrli started with her PhD which is part of the DROUGHT-HEAT Project.
published: May 9, 2016
| DROUGHT-HEAT Diagnostic Atlas & Dataset Updates | Richard Wartenburger |
| Terrestrial Water Storage Diagnostics | Vincent Humphrey |
| Update: Spatial and Temporal Variability of Land-Atmosphere Coupling | Clemens Schwingshackl |
| Land Surface-Temperature Feedbacks | Martha Vogel |
| Dry Spell Biases in Current Climate Models | Heewon Moon |
| Mitigation of Regional Temperature Extremes with Optimal Land Use | Anette ... |
published: May 1, 2016
Annette Hirsch started as a postdoctoral researcher in the DROUGHT-HEAT Project on the assessment of land-geoengineering options to mitigate the effects of droughts and heatwaves.
published: Nov. 17, 2015
| DROUGHT-HEAT: Land-Climate Interactions: Constraints for Droughts and Heatwaves in a Changing Climate | Sonia I. Seneviratne |
| Overview of PhD and First Results | Vincent Humphrey |
| Overview of PhD and First Results | Clemens Schwingshackl |
| Overview of DROUGHT-HEAT database and LandFlux-EVAL / ISI-MIP projects | Richard Wartenburger |
| Land surface-temperature feedbacks | Martha Vogel |
| Statistical ... |
published: Oct. 30, 2015
published: Oct. 1, 2015
Matthieu Leclair started as model developer on the DROUGHT-HEAT project.
published: Sept. 1, 2015
Martha Vogel and Heewon Moon started their PhD theses on present and future simulations of heatwaves and droughts in Earth System Models.
published: Sept. 30, 2014
Successful start of the project. Vincent Humphrey and Clemens Schwingshackl started their PhDs on processes and feedbacks leading to droughts and heatwaves. Richard Wartenburger started his position as data manager.
Land-climate interactions mediated through soil moisture and vegetation play a critical role in the climate system, in particular for the occurrence of extreme events such as droughts and heatwaves. These interactions are studied in the ERC granted project DROUGHT-HEAT lead by Prof Sonia I. Seneviratne.
The overall objective of the DROUGHT-HEAT project is to develop a comprehensive and quantitative leading-edge understanding of the land-climate feedbacks controlling heatwaves and droughts in both present and future climate, with the aim of reducing key uncertainties in ESMs and climate projections, and to advance climate change mitigation and adaptation. We consider the processes on global scale, as well as focus on several key land regions including Europe, North America, the Amazon region, and further major agricultural and/or drought-prone regions.
In the past years, in-situ and remote sensing-based datasets of soil moisture, evapotranspiration, and energy and carbon fluxes have become increasingly available, providing untapped potential for reducing associated uncertainties in current climate models (also known as Earth System Models (ESM)). The DROUGHT-HEAT project aims at innovatively exploiting these new information sources in order to
The DROUGHT-HEAT project integrates the newest land observational datasets with the latest stream of ESMs. Novel methodologies will be applied to extract functional relationships from the data, and identify key gaps in the ESMs’ representation of underlying processes. These will build on physically-based relationships, machine learning tools, and model calibration. In addition, they will encompass the mapping and merging of derived diagnostics in space and time to reduce “blank spaces” in the datasets.
There are two main axes for the project, on the one hand the investigation of droughts vs heatwaves, and their interactions and on the other hand the methodological components within the single work packages. There will be intense interactions and collaborations between the paired PhD theses within each work package, as well as across work packages with respect to data and methodological exchanges.
The DROUGHT-HEAT project is unprecedented in its breadth and scope and will allow a major breakthrough in our understanding of the processes leading to heatwaves and droughts.
