Contact
Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn. Günter Blöschl
bloeschl@hydro.tuwien.ac.at
Tel.: +43-1-58801-22315
Centre for Water Resource Systems,
Vienna University of Technology,
Karlsplatz 13/222, A-1040 Vienna, Austria
Institute of Hydrology and Water Resources Management, Vienna University of Technology, Karlsplatz 13/222, A-1040 Vienna, Austria
Publications
Haslinger, K., … and Blöschl, G. (2025). Increasing hourly heavy rainfall in Austria reflected in flood changes.Nature, 639, 667-672.
Bertola, M., Blöschl, G. et al. (2023). Megafloods in Europe can be anticipated from observations in hydrologically similar catchment. Nature Geoscience, 16, 982–988.
Blöschl, G. (2022). Three hypotheses on changing river flood hazards. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 26, 5015–5033.
Chagas,V.B.P. et al. (2022). Climate and land management accelerate the Brazilian water cycle. Nature Comm., 13, 5136.
Blöschl, G. et al. (2020). Current European flood-rich period exceptional compared with past 500 years. Nature, 583, 560–566.
Blöschl, G. et al. (2019). Changing climate both increases and decreases European river floods. Nature, 573, 108-111.
Blöschl, G. et al. (2017). Changing climate shifts timing of European floods. Science, 357, 588-590.
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People ›Faculty
Prof. Günter Blöschl
Responsibilities
Prof. Günter Blöschl is Head of the Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management, Director of the Centre for Water Resource Systems at TU Wien, and Chair of the Vienna Doctoral Programme on Water Resource Systems.
Research Interests
Prof. Blöschl is internationally recognised for advancing the science and practice of hydrology. He was the first to demonstrate, on the basis of observations, a clear link between a warming climate and changing flood hazards. By compiling an unprecedented European-scale flood database, he resolved long-standing ambiguities in earlier evidence and showed that recent decades are among the most flood-prone in the past five centuries. His regional analyses identified the drivers of these changes – increased rainfall in northwestern Europe, declining snow cover in the east, and reduced soil moisture in the south. He also demonstrated that intensifying short-duration rainfall has driven a marked rise in flooding in small catchments. These insights now provide the scientific foundation for predicting future risks and guiding flood management strategies.
Blöschl has led numerous projects that advance science and translate it into practice. In Austria, he developed national adaptation strategies for water resources management under climate change, designed approaches to reduce pluvial flood risks through optimised land management, and evaluated the effectiveness of alpine flood retention measures for peak reduction along the Inn River and other basins. He authored the national design flood guidelines for large dams, developed forecasting systems that proved critical during major Central European floods, and directed high-resolution hazard mapping projects (such as HORA 3.0), which made flood risk information widely accessible in line with the European Flood Directive. His research is underpinned by the Hydrology Open Air Laboratory (HOAL) in Lower Austria – a unique observatory for tracing water fluxes and water quality at high resolution he established, now a model for process-based catchment research worldwide.
Key Facts
Günter Blöschl graduated from TU Wien and held research fellowships in Vancouver, Canberra, and Melbourne. In 2007 he was appointed Chair of Hydrology and Water Resources Management at TU Wien. He has also held senior visiting and honorary positions internationally, including a part-time professorship at the University of Bologna.
His work has been published in leading journals such as Nature and Science. With more than 35,000 citations in Web of Science and nearly 60,000 in Google Scholar, his research has had a profound global impact.
Blöschl received an ERC Advanced Grant from the European Research Council and the Horton Medal of the American Geophysical Union. He is a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He has served as President of the European Geosciences Union and as Senator of the Helmholtz Association for the research field Earth and Environment. Recently, he was awarded the Stockholm Water Prize for his contributions to understanding climate change impacts on floods and water resources.