DETACC

Agricultural drought is a natural, reoccurring phenomenon that can affect any part of the globe. It consists one of the most challenging problems for the modern agriculture as it affects food production and hence the food security in regional and global level. In cases, long term agricultural droughts have provoked social unrest, even armed conflicts. Agricultural drought phenomena are usually studied by the means of meteorological based indices, however studying directly on the soil moisture parameter can provide a more comprehensive description of the phenomenon.
Anthropogenic interventions on water cycle have already affected, but also are expected to further affect the agricultural drought phenomena, due to their impacts on the hydrological cycle. Furthermore, already observed changes in the temperature and precipitation regime due to climate change, pose changes in the agricultural drought characteristics.
The purpose of this postdoctoral research is a) the systematic assessment of the most advanced global climate and hydrological experiments in their ability to simulate soil moisture, b) study of the causal link between the observed climate change and agricultural droughts c) study the effect of the projected climate change to the future droughts.

The implementation of this postdoctoral research was co-funded by Greece and European Union (ESF) through the Operational Program "Human Resource Development, Education and Lifelong Learning", under the Act "STRENGTHENING post-doctoral fellows / researchers - B cycle" (MIS 5033021) implemented by the State Scholarship Foundation (IKY).