In many parts of the world, the amount and quality of the available water is insufficient to satisfy the people's need for drinking water and for water for other purposes such as irrigation. It is especially critical that mankind is massively influencing the global water cycle, at the same time as climate change is affecting it. The question remains open, what affects human influence and climate change have on hydrological extreme events, floods and drought. One of the central topics of our section is research toward a better quantification of the water cycle and its changes in space and time. We are also working to better understand the hydrological risk and to derive lessons for the management of such catastrophes. For this work we also reach out to other experts in the various departments of the GFZ.
Although clean drinking water is one of the basic necessities of mankind, a solid, quantitative description of the global water household remains to be developed. Especially little is known about how the water household changes over time and space. At the present time, commonly available information is not sufficient to satisfactorily understand and simulate the spatial distribution of rivers, the reservoirs where water is stored in the cycle and the length of time it spends at each step of the cycle. The goal of our work is to improve this quantification. In the center of our efforts is the direct determination of those parameters with which the water household in a given watershed can be described. From this we develop hydrological models with which we can calculate the outflow and other important parameters.
The most costly natural disaster in Germany was the flood of August 2002 with damages of about 12 billion euros. Due to climate change, experts expect that the risk of hydrological extreme events will increase. The goal of our work is to develop methods to quantify the risk, as well as to manage the risk from these natural hazards. We view the entire chain of the process, from the initiating meteorological causes through the outflow in the watersheds, the waves of high water in the rivers and the effects of protective measures to the negative effects of hydrological extreme events. To do this, we develop simulation models of the various processes and calculate probabilities of occurrence and intensity for these hydrological extreme events. Using these tools, we can quantify their effects on mankind and his environment.
![[Translate to English:] Zeltlager](/fileadmin/_processed_/5/f/csm_Hydrologische_Prozesse_1779188c81.webp "[Translate to English:]")
![[Translate to English:] Aufräumen in Braunsbach 2020](/fileadmin/_processed_/4/3/csm_80938009_1__e50c1ede29.webp "[Translate to English:]")
![[Translate to English:] Solar Cube als Plattform für kontinuierliche gravimetrische Messungen](/fileadmin/_processed_/b/0/csm_Solar_cube_fe11510e93.webp "[Translate to English:]")
![[Translate to English:] Grimma](/fileadmin/_processed_/e/d/csm_DSC_0038-2-klein_51eb74e0cc.webp "[Translate to English:]")
Name of the Working Group: "Hydrological extremes"
Group Leader: Bruno Merz
Researchers involved: Heiko Apel,Li HanViet Dung Nguyen Sergiy Vorogushyn Nivedita SairamHeidi Kreibich Julian Haas Guan Xiaoxiang
Projects of the Working Group:
- KAHR | Climate Adaptation, Floods and Resilience: Scientific support of the reconstruction processes following the flood disaster in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia
- RFM | Regionales Hochwassermodell Deutschlands
- RIM2D | Helmholtz-Validierungsprojekt
- Compound Flooding: Assessing the Risk of Compound Pluvial and River Flooding
- Flood | Linking extreme, large-scale river floods
- CoPrepare | facilitates cooperation
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Name of the Working Group: "Hydrogravimetrie und großskalige Hydrologie"
Group Leader: Andreas Güntner
Researchers involved: Stephan SchröderMarvin ReichJulian Haas Heiko ThossDaniel RascheAbror Gafurov
Projects of the Working Group:
- HYGRA | Bestimmung hydrologischer Massenefekte in Gravimetermessungen und ihr Nutzen in der Hydrologie
- MOSES | Modular Observation Solutions for Earth System
- G3P | Global Gravity - based Groundwater Product
- Green Central Asia | Regional Research Network “Water in Central Asia” (CAWa)
- CLIMWATER | Assessment of climate impacts on water resources in Uzbekistan
- CosmicSense | DFG Forschungsgruppe
- TerraQ | Relativistische und quanten-basierte Geodäsie
- C3S | Datendienst für Terrestrial Water Storage & Grundwasser
- GlobalCDA
- MAGIC
- EDA
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Name of the Working Group: "Hochwasserrisiko und Klimaanpassung"
Group Leader: Heidi Kreibich
Researchers involved: Nivedita SairamThi Thu Trang Pham Nadja VeigelBruno MerzPhilipp BautzYamile Mariel Salame Villafani
Projects of the Working Group:
- HI-CliF Projekt | Auswirkungen von Hochwasserrisiken auf die Gesundheit
- DECIDER | Decisions for the Design of Adaptation Pathways and the Integrative Devolopment
- AVOSS | Impact based forecasting of heavy rain and flash floods at different scales
- Data Mining Human Behaviors for Flood Risk Assessment
- NatRiskChange | Naturgefahren und Risiken in einer Welt im Wandel , DFG Graduiertenkolleg
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Name of the Working Group:"Landschaftshydrologie"
Group Leader: Theresa Blume
Researchers involved: Anne HartmannGijs Vis
Projects of the Working Group:
Name of the Young Investigators Group : "HydroHealth"
Young Group Leader: Nivedita Sairam
Researchers involved: Thi Thu Trang Pham Nadja VeigelBruno MerzPhilipp BautzYamile Mariel Salame Villafani Heidi Kreibich
Projects :
![[Translate to English:] Abror Gafurov von dem Schriftzug "Welcome to Azerbaijan" und den UN und COP Logos](/fileadmin/_processed_/2/5/csm_2024_11_Baku_COP29_Abror_Gafurov_39a254a6d4.webp "[Translate to English:]")
2024
Sairam, Dr. Nivedita, 4.4: Deputy President of EGU „Division on Natural Hazards“, April 2024
Rafiezadeh Shahi, Dr. Kasra, 4.4: EGU Science Officer of the “Remote Sensing, AI, Data Science & Hazards Subdivision”, April 2024
Kreibich, PD Dr. Heidi, 4.4: IHP Volker prize medallist 2024, 2024 Volker medal, Florianopolis, Brazil, November 2024
2023
Agarwal, Ankit Dr., 4.4: Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award für 2023 der Abteilung Naturgefahren der EGU, April 2023
Agarwal, Ankit Dr., 4.4: Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS), Mai 2023
Kreibich, Heidi Dr. PD, 4.4: Präsidentin “International Commission on Human-Water Feedbacks (ICHWF)”, IAHS, Juli 2023
Kreibich, Heidi Dr. PD, 4.4: Präsidentin der EGU „Division on Natural Hazards“ für die Amtszeit 2025 – 2027 wiedergewählt, Dezember 2023
Merz, Bruno Prof. Dr., 4.4: WRR Editors’ Choice Award 2022 for paper: Merz, B., Basso, S., Fischer, S. Lun, D., Bloeschl, G., Merz, R. Guse, B., Viglione, A., Vorogushyn, S., Macdonald, E., Wietzke, L., Schumann, A.: Understanding Heavy Tails of Flood Peak Distributions. Water Resources Research, 58, e2021WR030506. doi.org/10.1029/2021WR030506; Dezember 2023
2022
Merz, Prof. Dr. Bruno, 4.4: Article features as an Editor's Highlight on Eos:https://eos.org/editor-highlights/nine-reasons-why-extreme-floods-may-be-worse-than-expected. August 2022
Merz, B., Basso, S., Fischer, S., Lun, D., Blöschl, G., Merz, R., et al. (2022). Understanding heavy tails of flood peak distributions. Water Resources Research, 58, e2021WR030506. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021WR030506.
Guse, PD Dr. Björn, 4.4: Chair of the Catchment Hydrology subdivision HS2 of EGU, January 2022
Ganguli, Poulomi Dr., 4.4: “IGSTC Women Involvement in Science and Engineering Research (WISER)” for project “CRA Floods: Compound Risk Assessment of heat-stress induced pluvial floods” (https://www.igstc.org/home/wiser); October 2022
2021
Güntner, Prof. Dr. Andreas, 4.4: Selected as the featured article in Volume 65, Issue 13: Kenea, T. T., Kusche, J., Kebede, S., Güntner, A. (2020): Forecasting terrestrial water storage for drought management in Ethiopia. - Hydrological Sciences Journal - Journal des Sciences Hydrologiques, 65, 13, 2210-2223, September 2021
Kreibich, PD Dr. Heidi, 4.4: Chair of Panta Rhei, an initiative of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences for the biennium of 2021-2023, Juni 2021
Kreibich, PD Dr. Heidi, 4.4: President EGU Division Natural Hazards, Dezember 2021
Merz, Prof. Dr. Bruno, 4.4: NPG Paper of the Month - Banerjee, A., Goswami, B., Hirata, Y., Eroglu, D., Merz, B., Kurths, J., Marwan, N. (2021): Recurrence analysis of extreme event-like data. - Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, 28, 2, 213-229.
2020
Blume, Dr. Theresa, 4.4: Chief Executive Editor von HESS (Hydrology and Earth System Sciences), 2020Guse, Dr. Björn, 4.4: Editor of Journal “Hydrological Processes”, 2020Merz, Prof. Bruno, 4.4: IAHS-UNESCO-WMO International Hydrology Prize - Volker medal 2020Merz, Prof. Bruno und Digital Earth 4.4: Auszeichnung des Projektes “Digital Earth“ mit dem Sonderpreis „Digital Science Award“ beim Digital Leader Award, 10.09.2020Sairam, Nivedita, 4.4: 2. Platz - Allianz Climate Risk Research Award, 28. October 2020
All GFZ job offers
Possible doctoral and master's theses as well as all student internships offered at the GFZ can also be found under the link above.
The opportunities specifically offered in our section are listed separately below:
