Stochastic amplification of climate change into floods and droughts change

The project will produce innovative knowledge on the interplay between climate, water cycle and society, with the aim to unravel how climate change propagates into floods and droughts change. Floods and droughts are among the most relevant impacts of climate change on modern society, as their frequency is increasing along with the vulnerability and exposure of communities. Furthermore, recent events have shown that small changes in climate extremes may resonate with land behaviors therefore being amplified into severe floods and droughts. Yet, little is known on the mechanisms regulating the transformation and amplification of changes in climate into changes in surface and subsurface water flows and their impact on humans. A significant limitation of current interpretations is their deterministic and disciplinary nature, which does not allow to take into account the stochastic behaviour of amplification. CO22Water will set up a transformative, transdisciplinary and stochastic theory to decipher the nonlinear dynamics of the processes underlying the propagation of change along the water cycle, ecological systems and human society. The key will be the integration of the physical, ecological and human dynamics into a unified, circular stochastic framework. As such, the exchange of reciprocal feedbacks between climate, water cycle, ecology and society, like for instance CO2 emissions and other radiative forcings, will be better understood and modeled. The CO22Water unified theory will allow the synthesis of principles to identify critical climatic, eco-hydrological and social states, scales and frequencies. CO22Water will unravel the impact of projected climate change on water related disasters at the different spatial and temporal scales, therefore addressing a grand challenge for humanity. It will provide guidance to policy makers to plan and implement climate change mitigation and adaptation within a sustainable strategy.

Sito di riferimento

www.albertomontanari.it/co22water

Team di ricerca UNIBO

• Alberto Montanari (DICAM)
• Marco Di Tommaso (DICAM)
• Antonio Navarra (BIGEA)

Ambiti di ricerca DICAM

Acque