Projects


HyMeX − Hydrological cycle in Mediterranean EXperiment

Project website http://www.hymex.org

Title HyMeX − Hydrological cycle in Mediterranean EXperiment
Abstract The international researchers' community is organized around the unifying ten years (2010-2020) long experimental HyMeX project. HyMeX is jointly carried out under umbrella of the World Weather Research Program (WWRP) and the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) of World Meteorological Organization (WMO). In detail, HyMeX is an international project which aims at:
  • improving our understanding of the water cycle, with emphases on extreme events by means of monitoring and modelling the Mediterranean coupled system (atmosphere-land-ocean), its variability (from the event scale, to the seasonal and interannual scales) and characteristics over one decade in the context of global change,
  • evaluating societal and economical vulnerability and adaptation capacity to extreme meteorological and climate events.
In particular, HyMeX aims at addressing key issues related to heavy precipitation and flash-flooding and intense air-sea exchanges produced by severe regional winds and cyclogeneses which cause oceanic dense water formation.
Multi-disciplinary research and the database developed within HyMeX are designed to improve the:
  1. observational and modeling systems, especially of coupled systems; this includes new processes modeling, parametrization development, novel data assimilation systems, reduction of uncertainty in climate modeling
  2. prediction capabilities for extreme events
  3. definition of adaptation measures, especially in the context of global change
Over the whole Mediterranean three Target Areas have been proposed for providing detailed and specific observations to study key processes of the water cycle. One of them is Adriatic and Dinaric Alps (Adriatic TA) which have been proposed as a target area for the study of heavy precipitation events and flash-flooding. The mean annual precipitation > 3000 mm have been recorded over the Northern Adriatic, particularly over the area of Kvarner Bay in the eastern Adriatic Sea, its mountainous hinterland Gorski Kotar and Istra Peninsula.
Key words Hydrlogical cycle, extreme events, heavy precipitation, severe winds, climate change, meteorology, hydrology, oceanography, Mediterranean area
Contact person dr.sc. Branka Ivančan Picek
(branka.ivancan-picek(at)cirus.dhz.hr, tel: 01-45 65 678)
dr.sc. Kristian Horvath, dr.sc. Ivan Güttler
Duration 2010 - 2020
Cooperation In Croatia: Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries Split, Department of Geophysics Faculty of Science University of Zagreb, "Ruđer Bošković" Institute