Project description
How to predict and mitigate deluge disasters
Erratic rainfall patterns fuelled by climate change pose a threat to our social, ecological and economic systems. Extreme floods loom larger than ever since uncertainties in projected regional rainfall, especially in the Mediterranean, hamper prediction efforts, leaving us unprepared to face nature’s fury. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the MODKARST project will leverage stalagmites as geological archives to create a comprehensive flood database for the western Mediterranean spanning millennia. By deciphering past flood events through detrital layers and sophisticated models, MODKARST will illuminate the intricate link between climate shifts and flood recurrence, forging a path to better predict and confront today’s global warming-induced floods.
Objective
Changes in rainfall patterns are a direct consequence of the current climate change. Climate projections indicate an intensification of extreme rainfall events (and floods), which will directly affect social, ecological, and economic systems. Thus, one of the greatest challenges of climate science is to understand, model, and predict the variability of floods both in temporal and spatial terms in the context of the present-day global warming. Nevertheless, the uncertainties in projected rainfall at regional scale are still high, and even higher in Mediterranean areas where the climate is characterized by extreme and sudden rainfall events. The instrumental record is too short to correctly estimate return floods periods. Thus, geological records are required to better understand the long-term variability, at millennial to decadal scales, of natural extreme flood events. Among the most important flood archives, including riverine and lake sediments, stalagmites represent one of the best geological records (i.e. accurate chronology, wide temporal range and good preservation) to study past flood frequency. However, stalagmites have not yet been properly exploited for this purpose. MODKARST will provide a unique opportunity to develop a quantitative flood database for the Western Mediterranean realm based on speleothems. To do so, the action plans to infer past flood events from the last 18,000 years based on detrital layers (indicative of flood events) recorded in stalagmites from 5 different caves. This data in combination with karst hydraulic models and water-level monitoring will allow to quantify past extreme flood events. MODKARST will help to better understand the relation among flood recurrence and climate changes, and will shed light on how to better predict the variability of floods in the context of present-day global warming.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global FellowshipsCoordinator
28006 Madrid
Spain