Dr. Rohini Kumar
Contact
Department Computational Hydrosystems (CHS)Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Permoserstr.15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany
Phone: +49 341 6025 1583
email: rohini.kumar (at) ufz.de
Research interests
My research work mainly focus on developing and establishing a robust multiscale parametrization scheme for water and solute transport modeling at a regional to continental scales. Current work include development and applications of multiscale Hydrologic Model (mHM), water Quality Model (mQM), innovative methods for providing reliable predictions of hydroclimatic extremes (floods, droughts, heatwaves), prediction in ungauged basins (PUB) uncertainty and risk assessment for integrated water resources management, data-analytics and statistical approaches for analyzing coupled water-food-energy nexus, hydrological assessments under changing environmental and climate condtions.
CV/Scientific career
- 2016: Visiting Scientist, Purdue University, IN, USA.
- Since 2010: Scientist at Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Leipzig, Germany
- 2006-2010: PhD researcher at Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Leipzig, Germany / The University of Jena, Germany
- 2005-2006: Visiting scholar at Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany (German Academic Exchange Service, DAAD Scholarship)
- 2004-2006: Master of Technology from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, India
- 2000-2004: Bachelor of Technology from Acharya N. G. Ranga Agricultural University, AP, India
Selected (recent) publications
- Y. Markonis, Kumar, R. et al., 2021, The rise of compound warm-season droughts in Europe. Science Advances 7 (6).
- Kumar, R. et al., 2020. Strong hydroclimatic controls on vulnerability to subsurface nitrate contamination across Europe, Nature Communications, 11, 6302.
- Ionita, M., Nagavciuc, V., Kumar, R. et. al., 2020. On the curious case of the recent decade, mid-spring precipitation deficit in central Europe. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science 3 (49).
- Mishra, V., Ambika, A.K., ..., Kumar, R. et al., 2020. Moist heat stress extremes in India enhanced by irrigation. Nature Geoscience (13), pp. 722–728.
- Hari, V., Rakovec, O., ..., Kumar, R., 2020. Increased future occurrences of the exceptional 2018–2019 Central European drought under global warming. Scientific reports, 10(1), pp.1-10.
- Maia-Silva, D., Kumar, R. et al., 2020. The critical role of humidity in modeling summer electricity demand across the United States. Nature communications, 11(1), pp.1-8.
- Kumar, R. and Mishra, V., 2020: Increase in population exposure due to dry and wet extremes in India under a warming climate, Earth Future , e2020EF00173.
- Schmidt, L., Heße, F., ..., Kumar, R., 2020. Challenges in applying machine learning models for hydrological inference: A case study for flooding events across Germany. Water Resources Research, 56(5), p.e2019WR025924.
- Samaniego, L., Thober, S., ..., Kumar, R., 2019. Hydrological forecasts and projections for improved decision-making in the water sector in Europe, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 100(12), pp.2451-2472.
- Moravec, V., Markonis, Y., ..., Kumar, R., et al. 2019. A 250‐year European drought inventory derived from ensemble hydrologic modeling. Geophysical Research Letters, 46(11), pp.5909-5917.
- Singh, R. and Kumar, R., 2019. Climate versus demographic controls on water availability across India at 1.5°C, 2.0°C and 3.0°C global warming levels. Global and Planetary Change, 177, pp.1-9.
- Samaniego, L., Thober, S.,Kumar, R., et al., 2018. Anthropogenic warming exacerbates European soil moisture droughts. Nature Climate Change, 8(5), pp.421-426.
- Hanel, M., Rakovec, O., ..., Kumar, R., 2018. Revisiting the recent European droughts from a long-term perspective. Scientific reports, 8(1), pp.1-11.
- Thober, S., Kumar, R., et al., 2018. Multi-model ensemble projections of European river floods and high flows at 1.5, 2, and 3 degrees global warming. Environmental Research Letters, 13(1), p.014003.
- Marx, A., Kumar, R., et al., 2018. Climate change alters low flows in Europe under global warming of 1.5, 2, and 3 C. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 22(2), pp.1017-1032.
For a complete list of publications, see:
Editorial board
- Earth's Future (AGU)
- Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (EGU)
- Frontier in Climate (Frontiers)
Journal referee
- Geophysical Research Letter (AGU), Water Resources Research (AGU), Journal of Hydrology (Elsevier), Advances in Water Resources (Elsevier), Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (EGU), Hydrological Sciences Journal (IAHS), Computers & Geosciences (Elsevier), Environmental Research Lettters (IOP), Environmental Modelling & Software (Elsevier), Hydrogeology Journal (Springer), Scientific Reports (Nature), Nature Communications (Nature), Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment (Springer), ...
Projects
- 2023-ongoing: "Resilient 0-Pollution Wastewater Systems in Climate Change: Case Study Saxony" - as a lighthouse project for research and innovation to tackle the challenges of climate adaptation and the``EU-Green Deal'' funded by the Development Bank of Saxony (SAB), Germany aims to map all essential quantitative, qualitative, toxicological and ecological characteristics of the Elbe River Basin system.
- 2022-ongoing: "Large-scale investigation on joint variation in Water Quality and quantity affecting riverine Fish biodiversity in a changing world (WatQual-Fish)" - the project funded within an open space framework of the Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS; www.casus.science), aimed at developing a large-scale modeling system for predicting global-change-driven, riverine fish biodiversity loss in rivers.
- 2022-ongoing: "Monitoring, Modelling, and Managing of Water Resources in the Lake Sevan basin (MM4Sevan)" - the project funded by the GIZ aimed at improving the understanding on available water resources in the Lake Sevan (Armenia) basin under contemporary and future climate conditions.
- 2019-2022: "Global Water Quality (GlobeWQ)" is pilot project financed by German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) to create a Global Water Quality Analysis and Service Platform.
- 2019-2022: "eXtreme EuRopean drOughtS: multimodel synthesis of past, present and future events (XEROS)" is a bilateral/joint German (DFG) and Czech (GACR) project focus on improving our understanding and modelling the complex interaction of extremes (floods, droughts, heatwaves), land-surface hydrologic processes and their spatial and temporal variability over a long time scales (past 250-years) across Europe.
- 2017-ongoing: The Earth System Modelling (ESM) project funded by the Helmholtz Association aims to improve the representation of the components of the Earth system and their coupling, as well as to perform a series of selected numerical experiments to address Grand Challenges (Frontier Simulations).
- 2017-2018: High-resolution Climate Indicators for 1.5 Degree Global Warming (HOKLIM) is project financed by German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) investigating and reporting on the changes in high and low river flows, as well as, soil moisture droughts using the multimodel, high resolution hydrological simulations across EU.
- 2016-2018: The End-to-end Demonstrator for improved decision making in the water sector in Europe (EDgE) is project from the EU based Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) on developing a Demonstrator Sectoral Information Service (SIS) based on appropriately tiered dissemination mechanisms of existing and new Sectoral Climate Impacts Indicators (SCIIs).
- 2014-ongoing: Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP), responsible for coordinating the application of the mHM model for the regional water sector.
- 2014-2015: Hyper-resolution Global Hydrological Modelling responsible for the application of the mHM model in this project.
- 2006-ongoing: Development of the mesocale Hydrologic Model (mHM) and the Multiscale parameter Regionalization scheme (MPR). The project is part of my research work and is financed by UFZ.
- 2005-06: "Online flood forecasting using artificial neural network (OFF-ANN)". The project was being done under a DAAD scholarship at Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany for the partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Technology.
- 2003-04: "Development of manually operated rotary power weeder for weed management in the System of Rice Intensification and other less rice production systems (SRI)". This Project was financially supported by Andhra Pradesh State Council of Science and Technology (APSCST), Govt. of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad, India for the partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Technology.