Hydrological Applications Research within GEWEX

The Global Energy and Water cycle Experiment (GEWEX) of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) has since its inception in the late ‘80s been involved in research of the energy transitions and the relationship with the water cycle on spatial scales varying from regional to global at all time scales. After two decades of research in this area much progress has been made in particular with respect to –global- data acquisition, production of extensive regional and global data sets of various hydrological and meteorological variables that together describe the complete energy and water cycle and process studies on various aspects of the energy and water cycle with respect to our climate.

In the past there were relatively limited efforts within GEWEX to use the gained knowledge and expertise to address hydrological applications, development of knew applications and/or improvement of existing applications. Recognizing our limited success in this area new strategies are being developed to better link with the various user communities and their interests. In this presentation in overview will be given of the direction GEWEX will undertake to better address the development and support of hydrological applications. Specific attention will be given to address the various societal benefit areas while realizing that there will be conflicting requirements with respect to e.g. observational data needs, models and type of informational output for the various applications of respective user communities.