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Drew Gronewold

Associate Professor
Sustainable Systems
Climate + Energy
Water
Cross-cutting
[email protected]
(734) 764-6286
CV
Office
2008 Dana
Lab website
SEAS Hydro Lab
Websites
Global Center for Climate Change and Transboundary Waters
Research group site
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About

Professor Gronewold’s research interests lie in hydrological modeling, with a focus on propagating uncertainty and variability into model-based water resources management decisions. His specific research areas include predicting runoff in ungauged basins, monitoring and understanding water quality dynamics in coastal areas, and incorporating probability theory and Bayesian statistics into watershed-scale data sets and forecasting tools. Professor Gronewold is also the lead PI for the US on the NSF-funded Global Center for Understanding Climate Change Impacts on Transboundary Waters.

He holds adjunct appointments in the U-M Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Prior to his appointment in SEAS, he worked in the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory as a hydrologist and physical scientist.

Publications

Select publications from 2024 and 2025.  Additional publications listed in CV.

Shin, S., Gronewold, A. D., Fry, L. M., Hong, Y., Cannon, D., & Fujisaki-Manome, A. (2025). Long-term hydroclimate trends in the Great Lakes basin: are there hotspots of regional change? Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies, 59, 102347.

Abdelhady, H., Fujisaki-Manome, A., Cannon, D., Gronewold, A. D., & Wang, J. (2025). Climate change-induced amplification of extreme temperatures in large lakes. Nature Communications Earth and Environment, 1(375).

Kessler, J., Espey, E., VanDeWeghe, A., Gronewold, A. D., Sorensen, T., Khazaei, B., James, E. P., Smirnova, T. G., Casali, M., Yates, D. N., Omani, N., Kelley, J. G. W., Barlage, M. J., Benjamin, S. G., & Anderson, E. J. (2025). Depth Matters: Lake Bathymetry Selection in Numerical Weather Prediction Systems. Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres, 130(2), e2024JD041794. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024JD041794

Gronewold, A. D., Bednar, J., Cort, M., Rueda, V., Moore, M., & Allan, J. W. (2024). Can continental transboundary compacts hold water? Nature Communications, 15, 7087. https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-51456-w.

Venumuddula, M., Kirchner, K., Chen, A., Rood, R. B., & Gronewold, A. D. (2024). Combining satellite, teleconnection, and in situ data to improve understanding of multi-decadal coastal ice cover dynamics on Earth’s largest freshwater lake. Earth and Space Science, 11(12), e2024EA003845. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EA003845

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Research

Representative research initiatives:

  • 2024 - 2029: National Science Foundation - ($4,970,000); Global Center for Understanding Climate Change Impacts on Transboundary Waters.
  • 2023 - 2025: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - ($347,883); Advancing modeling to support probabilistic projections of total water levels in Great Lakes coastal areas under climate scenarios: Development of next-generation prediction system.
  • 2022 - 2024: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Joint Technology Transfer Initiative (JTTI) - ($499,936); An optimized lake-treatment strategy for improved land-surface modeling and weather prediction in the Unified Forecast System (UFS).
Education

PhD, Duke University (Environmental Science and Policy)

BS, Cornell University (Civil and Environmental Engineering)

Affiliations
  • Session co-chair, “Using new data and technology to better understand freshwater and lake systems: end-to-end remote sensing and regional modeling approaches”, AGU Annual Meeting, New Orleans, December 2017
  • Session co-chair, “Regional water management: development and application of modeling and data for decisions”, 2017 International Association of Great Lakes Research annual meeting, Detroit, Michigan. June 2017.
  • Lead convener, workshop on Great Lakes Hydrological Modeling, Ann Arbor, MI, 2016
  • Session co-chair, “Interactions between large lakes and regional climate”, 2016 International Asso-ciation of Great Lakes Research annual meeting, University of Guelph, June 2016.
  • Great Lakes Ensemble Advisory Committee (GLISA), 2015
In the News
Smoke from the Canadian wildfires created hazy skies near the Mackinac Bridge in June 2023.
November 7, 2024

"The Great Lakes University"

U-M is a major convener of Great Lakes research thanks to its interdisciplinary efforts to address climate change and other problems. SEAS is a microcosm of that work because of its Great Lakes research centers and institutes; collaborations with other U-M units; and expansive partnerships with organizations within Ann Arbor, the region, and spanning the U.S., Canada and other countries. What this means, according to SEAS Dean Jonathan Overpeck, is that U-M is well-positioned to be “The Great Lakes University.”
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