WATCH IP. Water and Global Change. Third year Activity report to the European Commission.

Abstract

The Integrated Project (WATCH) brings together the hydrological, water resources and climate communities to analyse, quantify and predict the components of the current and future global water cycles and related water resources, evaluate their uncertainties and clarify the overall vulnerability of global water resources related to the main societal and economic sectors. The WATCH project will analyse and describe the current global water cycle, especially changes in extremes (droughts and floods). It will also evaluate, in a consistent way, how the global water cycle and its extremes will respond to future drivers of global change (including increasing greenhouse gas concentrations and land cover change). An essential component of the analysis of the 20th and 21st century global water cycle will be a better understanding of feedbacks in the coupled system as they affect the global water cycle and the uncertainties in coupled climate-hydrological model predictions using a combination of model ensembles and observations. Finally WATCH will provide comprehensive quantitative and qualitative assessments and predictions of the vulnerability of the water resources and water-climate-related vulnerabilities and risks for the 21st century