Prof. Dr. Harald Kunstmann

Research Foci

Impact of regional climate change on terrestrial hydrology
Dynamic and statistical downscaling of meteorological fields
Fully coupled and cross-compartmental regional atmospheric and hydrological modeling
Modeling and observation of water and energy flows
Application of Commercial Microwave Links (CMLs) for precipitation determination
Geostatistic Merging of hydrometeorological Variables
Seasonal predictions

Curriculum Vitae

Since 2021 Founding Director Centre for Climate Resilience at University of Augsburg

09/18-01/19 Honorary Research Assiciate at the University of Oxford

Since 2015 Deputy Director of the KIT Campus Alpin

Since 2009 W3 professor and holder of the Chair for Regional Climate and Hydrology at the University of Augsburg in joint appointment with the KIT Campus Alpin, Garmisch-Partenkirchen

Since 2004 Head of the Regional Climate Systems Department at the KIT Campus Alpin

Since 2001 Head of the research group Regional Climate and Hydrology at the KIT-Campus Alpin

Since 1999 Research associate at the Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research (KIT Campus Alpin)

1995-1998 Dissertation in Environmental Natural Sciences at ETH Zurich

1989-1994 Studied physics at the University of Marburg, Virginia/USA and Heidelberg

Honors and Awards

Kavli Frontier of Science Fellow, 2014
Keynote Speech, United Nations Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation UNSGAB+5 Conference, 12.2.2021
Water Resources Prize, Rüdiger Kurt-Bode Foundation – Stifterverband, 2021

Selected Publications

Chwala, C. and Kunstmann, H. (2019) Commercial microwave link networks for rainfall observation: Assessment of the current status and future challenges, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, Volume 6, Issue 2, doi: 10.1002/wat2.1337

Kunstmann, H., Stadler, C. (2005) High resolution distributed atmospheric-hydrologic modeling for Alpine catchments, Journal of Hydrology, 314, pp. 105-124

Lorenz, C. and Kunstmann, H. (2012) The Hydrological Cycle in Three State of the Art Reanalyses: Intercomparison and Performance Analysis. Journal of Hydrometeorology, doi:10.1175/JHM-D-11-088.1

Lorenz. C., Portele, T., Laux, P., Kunstmann, H. (2020) Bias-corrected and spatially disaggregated seasonal forecasts: a long-term reference forecast product for the water sector in semi-arid regions, Earth System Science Data, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2020-177

Sylla, M. B., Pal, J. S., Faye, A., Kangbeni, D., Kunstmann, H. (2018) Climate change to severely impact West African basin scale irrigation in 2 °C and 1.5 °C global warming scenarios, Nature Scientific Reports, Volume: 8, Issue: 1, Pages: 14395, doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-32736-0

extended publication list

Research Projects

Current projects
AtmoWater	High-resolution atmospheric water vapor based on geodetic satellite measurement, tomographic intersection and atmospheric modeling
CONCERT	Greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation options under climate- and land use change in West Africa: A concerted regional modeling and observation assessment
Cosmic Ray Neutron Sensing	Integrated hydrological modeling and analysis of the interaction between soil moisture and the atmospheric boundary layer
Digital Earth	Towards SMART Monitoring and Earth System Integrated Data Exploration - Implementing the Data Science Paradigm
Enershelf	High resolution energy meteorological forecasting for improved management of PV-hybrid systems
FOR2131	Combination of observation types for precipitation (rain gauges, commercial microwave links, weather radar) to precipitation fields for use in fully coupled data assimilation systems
HoWa Innovativ	More accurate forecasting of floods by improving precipitation measurement using data from commercial microwave links (CMLs)
LandKlif TP-8	Climate and water balance analysis for Bavaria using extremely high-resolution regional earth system modeling
SALDI	South Africa Land Degradation Monitor - Land-Atmosphere Interactions: Regional Assessment
STUDIO	STeigerwald study area: Forecasting and management system for coping with Drought perI-Ods in Franconia.
Finished projects
BIAS1	Local refinement and bias correction of climate projections
BIAS2	Synthesis of high-resolution regionalization, multivariate stochastic bias correction and optimized hydrological model and process analysis
SYNOPSE	Synthetic precipitation time series for the optimal planning and operation of urban drainage systems
WASCAL	West African Science Service Center on Climate and Adapted Land Use - Implementation Phase