Climate and Water Cycle (Prof. Christoph Schär)

Move your pointer over the picture to identify the group members and click to see the personal webspaces. Missing on the picture are: Omar Bellpart, Erich Fischer, Hanieh Hassanzadeh, David Leutwyler, Guido Müller, Jan Rajczak and Hans-Heini Vogel.

 

The main objective of the group Climate and Water Cycle, led by Prof. Christoph Schär, is to improve the understanding of the climate system and its interactions with the water cycle on time-scales from 1 day to 100 years. Our mission is

• to better understand the underlying mechanisms, trends, variations and extremes; and

• to improve the predictive capabilities and exploitation of weather and climate models.

Our research is primarily based on numerical models and data analysis. The group contributes to and uses a hierarchy of models, among these state-of-the-art global and regional climate models (ECHAM5-HAM at resolutions between 280 km and 120 km, COSMO-CLM at resolutions between 50 and 1 km), as well as a hydrological model (PREVAH). In addition, the group has expertise in statistical data analysis and has contributed to the compilation of climate data sets.

Current projects address the role of the water cycle in a changing climate, considering a time span from the recent past to the near-term future. Particular consideration is given to changes in radiation (global dimming and brightening), the European summer climate (hydrological cycle and interannual variability), extreme events (process studies and scenarios of droughts, heat waves, heavy precipitation events, floods), and the role of topography for the water cycle.

Ongoing research projects:

Regional climate processes, modeling and scenarios
Radiation and hydrological cycle on global scales
Cloud resolving modeling