Winter Hydrology and Its Critical Role in Water Resources Under Climate Change
A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Hydrology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 January 2027 | Viewed by 15
Editors
Interests: cold region hydrology; glacier model; hydrological model; hydrological extremes; glacio-hydrology; remote sensing
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Winter hydrology is critical because it determines how winter precipitation is stored, transformed, and released as usable water for the rest of the year in cold, snow-dominated regions. Seasonal snowpack and frozen soils shape the partitioning of water into surface runoff, groundwater recharge, and baseflow, directly influencing water availability. As the climate warms, less precipitation falls as snow, snowpacks shrink, and snow melts earlier, shifting runoff from summer to winter and early spring. This threatens water security for hundreds of millions of people worldwide, reduces the predictable, buffering role of snow, and causes streamflow to more closely follow individual storms, increasing risks of both winter floods and summer droughts. In many cold and mountain regions where snowmelt contributes significantly to annual runoff, these changes demand major adaptations in water management to sustain drinking water, irrigation, ecosystems, and hydropower under climate change.
This Special Issue, “Winter Hydrology and Its Critical Role in Water Resources Under Climate Change,” aims to bring together new observations, modeling advances, and interdisciplinary assessments that improve understanding of winter water dynamics and their implications for water security. We welcome contributions addressing snow accumulation and melt, permafrost processes, glacier and mountain hydrology, groundwater–surface water interactions, hydrochemical and isotope tracing, extreme events and flood risk, and water resource management under a changing climate. Studies combining field monitoring, remote sensing, laboratory experiments, numerical modeling, data assimilation, and decision-support frameworks are especially encouraged. The issue seeks to inform adaptation strategies for sustainable water allocation, hazard mitigation, and ecosystem protection in a warming world.
Dr. Jingheng Huang
Dr. Chunhai Xu
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- winter hydrology
- climate change
- groundwater recharge
- snowmelt
- frozen soil
- permafrost
- groundwater–surface water interactions
- winter baseflow
- water resources
- hydrological extremes
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