Megadroughts in the Water towers of Europe - from process understanding to strategies for management and adaptation

This proposal tackles a major societal challenge with a multi-disciplinary program of research on potential megadroughts in Europe and their impact on European water resources, to provide both a novel scientific understanding of megadroughts and advanced tools to cope with megadroughts and water scarcity. It revolves around a central hypothesis, that mountains and catchments with storage elements such as snow and glaciers can buffer megadroughts, supplying much needed water during dry prolonged periods, up to a tipping point, when the storage is depleted, land cover changes irreversibly and the drought is amplified.