MEGAWAT
Megadroughts in the Water towers of Europe – from process understanding to strategies for management and adaptation.
Megadrought in the Andes Mountains. Photo: Vicente Melo
Last news!
- The mid-term review meeting of Water4All Joint Call 2022 will take place in Madrid on November 12-13, 2025.
- We had our MegaWat annual meeting on October 8-9, 2025.
- Our coordinator, Francesca Pellicciotti, presented MegaWat’s latest findings at the VISTA Festival in ISTA.
- We presented some preliminary results of MegaWat at the IMC25 conference in Innsbruck.
Megadroughts in Europe
Megadroughts are persistent, multi-year drought events of exceptional severity, duration or spatial extent. Europe might be at a turning point for experiencing longer and more severe droughts, and a future of increased water scarcity.
We do not know how such extreme and prolonged dry periods might affect the continent, and how glaciers and snow cover may mitigate the consequences of severe drought conditions.
To effectively prepare society and develop strategies to alleviate megadroughts impacts, it is fundamental to i) understand the causes of these severe dry spells; ii) study their impact on mountain hydrology and downstream water resources; iii) provide knowledge on the vulnerability of Europe’s water towers and the role of the cryosphere; and iv) equip stakeholders with scenario-based projections of the impacts of future megadroughts on mountain catchments.
Region of the Ebro delta. Photo: José A. Sartorio – www.artslow.es
Project goals
The two main goals of the project are thus:
1. To understand megadrought drivers and their impact on land-surface interactions and the water cycle of Europe’s key mountain regions.
2. To devise new adaptation and water management strategies to mitigate the effects of megadroughts with unprecedented duration and intensity.
Ebro basin. Photo: Adrià Fontrodona-Bach
General information of the project
MegaWat is funded by Water4All and led by ISTA.
Other Funding organizations:
- Dutch Research Council (NWO), Netherlands
- Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF), Austria
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Switzerland
- Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI), Spain
Duration
36 months
Project PI’s institutions
Work Packages
These segments describe the main work packages of MEGAWAT. Click on the individual tabs to discover more details about each work package.
Expected outcomes
MegaWat will advance research on extreme droughts via interdisciplinary, collaborative and international research.
MegaWat outcomes:
- Map of past extreme droughts: a new European map detailing extreme droughts, including climate processes and anomalies that triggered them.
- Projection of future megadroughts: an open-access database of future megadroughts projections for Europe;
- Downscaled projections of climate and energy variables: development of an open-access high-resolution database (250 m) of downscaled future megadrought projections, including key climate and energy balance variables;
- Deep understanding on mountain catchment responses: a novel understanding of how the cryosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere of mountain catchments react to prolonged droughts, focussing on changing storage and glacier roles and tipping points
- Megadrought scenarios: physically plausible storylines of European megadrought events.
- New knowledge on megadrought triggers: a comprehensive Identification of megadrought triggers to develop a novel early warning system.
- Identification of possibile adaptation measures and evaluation of their feasibility and effectivenes in selected areas.
- Assessment with stakeholders of possible bottlenecks in implementing identified mitigation measures.
Photo: José A. Sartorio – www.artslow.es
Project’s coordinator
ISTA
Francesca Pellicciotti
Professor
Ciao! I am Francesca, and I lead the Cryosphere and Mountain Hydrosphere research group at ISTA. I am an environmental engineer by background and have a passion for the mountains and their glaciers. Together with my wonderful team, we focus on monitoring and modelling the mountain cryosphere and its hydrological contributions.
Michael McCarthy
Scientific Researcher
My current research is about how mountain regions have responded, and will respond, ecohydrologically, to changes in climate. A particular focus area is drought. Towards this end, I am using process-based models together with satellite imagery and field observations. I have a PhD in glaciology and a Master’s in geology, and I have a broad interest in environmental systems and associated analytical tools.
Maximiliano Rodríguez
Postdoctoral Researcher
My research focuses on unravelling the potential effects of megadroughts in European catchments. With more than 5 years of experience in research projects on hydrology, ecology, and biogeochemistry, I seek to understand the consequences of future drier conditions on the cryosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and pedosphere. My research interests include hydrological modelling, remote sensing, and biogeochemical processes in soils.
Partners on the project
WSL
Dirk Karger
Álvaro Ayala
Scientific Researcher
I am interested in quantifying the water contribution of snow and mountain glaciers, and in understanding their variations at different spatial scales (from basins to regions) and temporal scales (from hours to decades). To do this, I combine ground data, satellite products and meteorological models to perform computational simulations of snow dynamics and glacier mass balance. I’m currently working on detailed hydrological models to simulate the response of glacierized catchments to severe droughts.
Utrecht University
Walter Immerzeel
Professor
Katrina Gelwick
Postdoctoral Researcher
Emmy Stigter
Postdoctoral Researcher
My research focuses on improving our understanding of the impacts of megadroughts on the European water towers through ecohydrological modeling. With a background in cryosphere and hydrology, my main interest lies in the buffering capacity of mountain regions during downstream droughts.
FutureWater
Sergio Contreras López
Scientific Researcher
Dr. Sergio Contreras is a dryland ecohydrologist, and water and drought expert with more than 20 years of career as scientific-researcher (2002-2013) and senior consultant (2013-ongoing). His expertise centres around two main topics: a) ecohydrological studies and water resources assessments by combining simulation models and satellite-based technologies, and b) technical and social impact assessments of innovative solutions and drought adaptation and mitigation strategies, with a focus on water and food security. Dr. Contreras is especially interested in generating and bringing knowledge on how water stress conditions determine the interactions and feedbacks among the hydrosphere, the biosphere and the anthroposphere.
Amelia Fernández-Rodríguez
Geodata Scientist
Amelia Fernández MSc. holds a BSc. In Telecommunications Systems Engineering and a MSc. In Telecommunications Engineering from Polytechnical University of Cartagena, Spain. Taking advantage of the wide range of possible applications of Telecommunications, she had been focused during her study on trying to use remote sensing for solving real problems and challenges related to Climate Change and Earth Observation.
Amelia has developed expertise in geospatial analysis, software development and forecasting tools for supporting sustainable water resources management and developing climate adaptation strategies.In addition, she has designed and delivered training programs in countries such as Zambia and Pakistan for well-known institutions as NUFFIC (the Netherlands) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UN-FAO).
National Research Council of Italy (CNR)
Emanuele Romano
Senior Researcher
Graduated in Physics at the University of Milan, I obtained the PhD in Earth Sciences at the same University. In the last years I focussed my research on the assessment of climate change impacts on water resources and related water supply systems under drought conditions. Currently, I am the Scientific Coordinator of the following projects: i) EU project SD-WISHEES “Supporting and Developing Widening Strategies to tackle Hydroclimatic Extreme Events: impacts and Sustainable solutions for cultural heritage (HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-ERA-01); ii) ACQUACENTRO 3.1 and 2.1, funded by the Central Apennine Hydrographic District. I’m a member of the Great Risks Committee (Italian Civil Protection Department) – Sector: Forest fires and water deficit and of the EU Common Implementation Strategy Working Group on Water Scarcity and Droughts.
Jessica Amadio
Programme and Communication manager
Currently my work focuses on the management and communication of diverse research projects in the fields of sustainable water management and protection of cultural heritage threatened by hydroclimatic extreme events.
Nicolas Guyennon
Researcher
My contribution focus on the response of the climate system in the anthropocene through analyses of meteorological, hydrological and hydrogeological variables of the last century and projections of the future climate on a regional scale in the climatic hot spots of Mountain environments and Mediterranean basin. This contribution is based on studies on the interaction between climate, cryosphere, soil, subsoil, up to considering infrastructures and adaptation measures. The main added value of my scientific contribution lies at the crossroads between climate change, cryosphere and drought.
Franco Salerno
ETH Zürich
Heini Wernli
Professor
My research group investigates the dynamics of extratropical weather systems and extreme events with a combination of theoretical concepts, diagnostic approaches, and numerical modeling.
Robin Noyelle
Postdoctoral Researcher
My higher education drove me from general physics and mathematics to environmental and climate sciences with a particular focus on atmospheric sciences. I am also interested by dynamical systems approaches to study non-linearities in the climate system. In my PhD I studied the statistical and dynamical aspects of extreme heatwaves in the mid-latitudes using techniques from non-equilibrium statistical physics such as rare events algorithms and instanton analysis.
Erich Fischer
Reto Knutti
Publications
The project MegaWat has received funding from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI), Dutch Research Council (NWO), National Research Council (CNR) and the European Union’s Horizon Europe Programme under the 2022 Joint Transnational Call of the European Partnership Water4all (Grant Agreement
n°101060874)
