Latest developments

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    Call for applications IUBS-INQUA conference

    A joint IUBS-INQUA conference will be organized in China in November 2025.

  • Shackleton Conference 2025 – Submerged Quaternary Landscapes
    Shackleton Conference 2025 – Submerged Quaternary Landscapes

    The fourth Shackleton Conference will take place at Burlington House, London, on 22 September 2025. The conference will focus on vanished landscapes, the seafloor as a geological palimpsest retaining sketchy evidence for Quaternary landscapes that…

  • INQUA 2027 Talk Series
    INQUA 2027 Talk Series

    Join us for an engaging session with Prof. Jeffery R. Stone (Indiana State University, USA) discussing Holocene marine flooding & ecosystems of Lake Izabal, Guatemala scheduled for Saturday, 26 July 2025  at 6:00 PM IST…

  • Podcast INQUA 2027 India
    Podcast INQUA 2027 India

    Quaternary is the age when modern recognisable humans started inhabiting this planet. All over the world scientists are engaged in studying various aspects of human evolution. Once every 4 years scientists from all across the…

INQUA 2453 my: Palaeo-Hydrology: Ancient disasters, modern application (PHADMA)

PHADMA project targets the global spatial and temporal distribution of past hydrological extremes, to improve the quality of risk assessments, and modern flood event attribution.

Abstract

A rapidly warming climate has led to an intensification of the hydrological system, notably with an increase in extreme hydroclimatic events, such as floods and droughts. Risk assessment studies and mitigation strategies for the present and future depend heavily on monitored data. Unfortunately, the length of monitored series is limited, rarely spanning more than a century, and usually significantly shorter for peripherical regions. Hence, true evidence-based precedents for extreme hydrological events are often missing. The lack of such crucial baseline information is increasingly recognised as a weakness in modern event attribution studies. Such, there is a growing concern that our fundamental knowledge of the natural variability within the hydroclimate system may be limited. The field of palaeohydrology can greatly strengthen attribution studies and further our understanding of the potential future of hydroclimatic extremes. As part of the GLOCOPH (INQUA’s Global Continental Palaeohydrology working group), the PHADMA project aims to bridge the gap between the palaeo-data community, climate modellers and risk managers by seeking new approaches to utilise and implement information on extreme hydrologic events (floods and droughts) derived from palaeo-environmental and historical research.

Objectives:

  • To increase our knowledge of the global spatial and temporal distribution of past hydrological extremes;
  • To support risk assessments and modern extreme event attribution studies;
  • To stimulate the transfer of knowledge and to develop multi-disciplinary skills.

Project Leaders:

  • Dr. Willem Toonen, the Netherlands
  • Dr. Ray Lombardi, United States of America
  • Dr. Ankit Agarwal, India

Events

  • Kick-off meeting/workshop, 24-25th Nov 2024, Amsterdam (the Netherlands)
  • Mid-term GLOCOPH conference and fieldtrip, 9-14th Jun 2025, Bonn (Germany)
  • Summer school extreme event attribution, Summer 2026 (dates tbc), Amsterdam (the Netherlands)
  • Pre-INQUA workshop and field trip, 2027, Roorkee (India)

Explore more on this subject

Publications

INQUA serves the Quaternary Research community by supporting the publication of two scientific journals published by Elsevier: Quaternary International (QI), a hybrid Journal launched in 1989 that publishes 36 volumes/year, Quaternary Environments and Humans (QEH),…