The European Geoscience Union (EGU) General Assembly, held from April 28th to May 4th, 2025, at the Austria Centre Vienna, brought together scientists and researchers from around the globe. FutureWater was proud to be a part of this event, presenting its latest work under the SOS-water EU Horizon project, which aims to define the Safe Operating Space of water for European basins.

On Wednesday, April 30th, Tijmen Schults presented a breakthrough in snow water equivalent (SWE) downscaling. SWE, a critical parameter for hydrological modeling, measures the amount of meltable water in a snowpack. Tijmen introduced a new model that uses the machine learning algorithm XGBoost to downscale ERA5-Land SWE data to a higher resolution, significantly enhancing its accuracy.

Schults’ presentation, part of session HS2.1.1 – Snow and Glacier Hydrology, outlined the model’s setup and demonstrated its impressive performance. The presentation captured the attention of many researchers, sparking interest and discussions across the conference.