Water and climate - they are of utmost importance for us, our environment and our future. Our work faces the challenge to contribute to the following central scientific and societal relevant questions: How much water is available in a certain region? How does water availability or flooding risk change in a transient climate? Which long-term interdependencies and interactions exist between the land surface, subsurface and the overlying atmosphere? What kind of climate will we likely face untill 2100? How reliable are long-term climate projections and medium-term seasonal forecasts? Are observed and projected the hydrological and atmospherical changes statistically significant? To find answers to these questions, complex hydrological, atmospherical and coupled numerical model systems are developed, refined and applied. They are used to perform both hydrological and climatological case-studies for sensitive pilot regions. In addition multivariate statistical methods as well as data from terrestrial observatories (e.g. TERENO and WASCAL) and satellite or earthbound remote-sensing are applied. Another focus of work are local statistical regionalisation methods to project expected changes in selected climatological variables. Especially extreme values are aimed at.

The chair is established jointly with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology – KIT - and works in close collaboration with its Institute of Meteorology and Climate research – KIT/IMK-IFU – in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.