Prof. Dr. Manuela Brunner

I am an assistant professor at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich and the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF in Davos. Before moving to Davos, I studied Geography and Climate Sciences at the University of Bern, obtained a PhD from the Universities of Zurich and Grenoble-Alpes, and did postdocs at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder Colorado. My research focuses on extreme climatic and hydrological events such as floods and droughts. I study the hydro-meteorological drivers of extreme events, develop methods for their prediction, and assess changes in the water cycle and extremes. My group at ETH and SLF quantifies the hazard potential and water availability in mountain regions under global change.

• Hydrology
• Flood and drought frequency analysis
• Prediction in ungauged basins
• Spatial extremes
• Stochastic simulation of extremes and streamflow time series
• Climate change impact assessments on extremes and water resources
• Human influence on extremes and water availability
• Climate impacts in mountain regions

Academic positions

• from 11/2022: Assistant professor, ETH Zurich and WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, Hydrology & Climate Impacts, Davos, Switzerland
• 03/2021 – 10/2022: Lecturer, University of Freiburg, Chair of Environmental Hydrological Systems, Freiburg, Germany
• 08/2019 – 02/2021: PostDoc, Research Applications Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research NCAR, Boulder CO, United States
• 02/2018 – 07/2019: PostDoc, Group for Mass Movements and Mountain Hydrology, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland
• 02/2015 – 01/2018: Research assistant, Geographical Institute, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Education

• 02/2015 – 02/2018: PhD in Geography in a “co-tutelle”, University of Zurich, Department of Geography, Hydrology and Climate Group and Université Grenoble-Alpes, Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement (IGE)
  PhD Thesis: Catchment- and event-type specific synthetic design hydrographs for Swiss catchments
• 09/2012 – 10/2014: Master of Science in Climate Sciences, University of Bern
  Master’s Thesis: Modelling the influence of the spatial and temporal precipitation distribution on the peak discharge of the Simme basin in the Berner Oberland
• 09/2009 – 09/2012: Bachelor of Science in Geography, University of Bern
  Bachelor’s Thesis: Spectrocolorimetric analysis of lake sediments. Application on a core from Laguna Chica de Icalma (Chile)

Distinctions and awards

• 05/2024: Outstanding Reviewer Award: Earth’s Future, American Geophysical Union
• 11/2023: SNSF Starting Grant
• 06/2022: Outstanding Reviewer Award 2021: Geophysical Research Letters and Water Resources Research, American Geophysical Union
• 11/2021: Hydrological Sciences Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award, European Geosciences Union
• 06/2021: Outstanding Reviewer Award 2020: Water Resources Research, American Geophysical Union
• 06/2018: Faculty award for the top 5% of PhD theses, University of Zurich

Editorships

• 09/2021 –: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, HESS
• 01/2022 –: Water Resources Research, WRR

• Climate impacts on hydro-climatic extremes in the Alps (INTERPRAEVENT conference, 06/2024, Vienna)
• Drought generation processes in Europe: variability in space and time (EMS Annual Meeting, 09/2023, Bratislava)
• Climate and regulation impacts on droughts, floods, and their transitions (Panta Rhei Symposium, 07/2023, Potsdam)

• Entwicklung von Extremszenarien in der Schweiz und Auswirkungen auf die Wasserwirtschaft (Blaues Kolloquium at VAW, 05/2024, Zurich)
• Climate and reservoir influences on droughts, floods, and their transitions (CLIMACT/ECCE seminar at the University of Lausanne, 03/2024, Lausanne)
• Exceptional flood events: insights from three simulation approaches (Statistics seminar at ETH Zurich, 02/2024, Zurich)
• Umgang mit zukünftigen Klima- und Wasserrisiken (ETH Klimarunde, 10/2023, Zurich)
• Hochwasser und Trockenheit – heute und in Zukunft (Naturforschende Gesellschaft Chur, 10/2023, Chur)
• Climate and reservoir management effects on floods (GEWEX workshop, 09/2023, online)
• Exceptional floods: insights into their frequency and changes (EURO-FRIEND workshop, 07/2023, online)
• Hydroclimatic extreme events in the Alps under global change (University of Bonn, 06/2023, Bonn)
• An extremeness threshold determines the regional response of floods to changes in rainfall extremes (University of Padova, 04/2023, online)
• Spatial extremes: from floods to droughts (University of Bern, 04/2023, Bern)
• Different flavors of drought (ETH Zurich, 11/2022, Zurich)
• Hydrological extremes under global change (ETH Zurich, 09/2022, Zurich)
• Reservoir effects on streamflow seasonality and hydrologic extremes (UFZ, 09/2022, Halle)
• Exceptional floods: Leveraging large-ensemble simulation approaches to study their frequency and changes (University of Arizona, 04/2022, online)
• Water resources and hydrological extremes in mountain regions under global change (ETH Zurich, 02/2022, online)
• Exceptional flood events: how increasing sample size helps to study their frequency and magnitude (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 11/2021, online)
• Exceptional hydrological events: three ways to study their frequency by increasing sample size (University of Oxford, 09/2021, Oxford)
• Spatial hydrological extremes: from floods to droughts (Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et l’Environnement, 09/2021, Gif-sur-Yvette)
• Spatially compounding flood events in the United States: where, why, and how often they are happening (Risk KAN Webinar, 08/2021, online)
• Spatial droughts and floods: understanding, modeling, and prediction (University of Saskatchewan, 07/2021, online)
• Water resources and hazards in mountainous regions under global change (EPFL, 05/2021, online)
• Spatial hydrologic extremes in the United States: from floods to droughts (University of Potsdam, 02/2021, online)
• Predicting hydrologic extremes: a multivariate perspective (University of Lausanne, 12/2020, online)
• How does climate change impact flow regimes? Answers from two different perspectives (University of Bern, 11/2020, online)
• Regional floods in the United States (Oxford Water Network, 11/2020, online)
• Regional floods in the United States (Florida State University, 09/2020, online)
• Future streamflow regime changes in the United States. Assessment using functional classification (AMS seminar series, 06/2020, online)
• Regional floods in the United States (California State University East Bay, 04/2020, online)
• Hydrological extremes: processes, prediction, simulation, and changes (University of Birmingham, 03/2020, online)
• Flood hazard assessments in gauged and ungauged catchments using frequency analysis and stochastic simulation approaches (CU Boulder, 09/2019, online)