The Effect of Water Vapor Originating from Land on the 2018 Drought Development in Europe

The 2018 summer drought in Europe was particularly extreme in terms of intensity and impact due to the combination of low rainfall and high temperatures. However, it remains unclear how this drought developed in time and space in such an extreme way. In this study we aimed to get a better understanding of the role of land–atmosphere interactions...

Root for rain: Towards understanding land-use change impacts on the water cycle

We live today on a human-dominated planet under unprecedented pressure on both land and water. The water cycle is intrinsically linked to vegetation and land use, and anticipating the consequences of simultaneous changes in land and water systems requires a thorough understanding of their interactions. This thesis aims to advance our knowledge...

A new view on the hydrological cycle over continents

Where does precipitation come from? It is not easy to answer this question because of the complex and energy-intensive processes that bring moisture to a certain location and cause moisture to precipitate highly heterogeneously in space and variable over time. Part of the precipitation comes from so-called “moisture recycling”, which is moisture...

Origin and fate of atmospheric moisture over continents

There has been a long debate on the extent to which precipitation relies on terrestrial evaporation (moisture recycling). In the past, most research focused on moisture recycling within a certain region only. This study makes use of new definitions of moisture recycling to study the complete process of continental moisture feedback. Global maps...