inventWater ITN project: Inventive forecasting tools for adapting water quality management to a new climate

Research introduction

Long-term climate change, extreme events, and seasonal variations in weather have profound impacts on water quality of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. This implies a pressing need for tools anticipating the impacts of these environmental changes and enabling effective water management that safeguards the ecosystem goods and services freshwaters provide.

Research challenges

The increasing availability of new climate data products and advances in modelling now mean that it is possible for the first time to produce reliable forecasts for lake and river water quality on regional and global scales. inventWater (Inventive forecasting tools for adapting water quality management to a new climate) will bring water quality forecasting to the forefront of the scientific disciplines supporting managers and policy-makers to design measures for adaptation to a new climate. The training programme is carefully interwoven with a research plan that will develop innovative forecasting tools for water quality predictions at different time horizons (from days to centuries). The strength of the consortium network and the multidisciplinarity of the PhD projects will produce a new generation of climate and water scientists, the inventWater fellows, who can apply their skills and research outputs to a wide range of pressing water quality issues, from local adaptation to increases of climatic extreme events, to supporting adaptation to climate change and achievement of UN Sustainable Development Goals.

ITN inventWater (Innovative forecasting techniques for adapting water quality management to a changing climate) project within the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement (n° 956623).