Regional Mountain Conference

High-elevation regions are increasingly exposed to intensifying drought conditions, challenging the long standing role of mountains as reliable water towers. Glacierized catchments represent particularly complex systems, where atmospheric forcing, snow and glacier dynamics, and hydrological processes interact across multiple timescales to modulate drought impacts. Despite their importance, drought processes in glacierized alpine basins remain insufficiently understood. This study focuses on glacierized catchments in the Italian Alps, including basins in north-western and north-eastern Italy (Piedmont, Aosta Valley, and Trentino). This region represents a climatic transition zone between Mediterranean and continental alpine regimes, where drought responses may differ from those observed in other mountain areas. At the same time, downstream water availability from these catchments is critical for hydropower production, irrigation, drinking water supply, and alpine ecosystems. We investigate how droughts have manifested and evolved in Italian glacierized catchments over the period 2000–2024, analysing their spatial and temporal variability and their propagation across meteorological, snow, glacier, and hydrological compartments. Meteorological droughts are characterized using precipitation and temperature anomalies derived from the BigBang dataset. Snow droughts and glacier melt contributions are assessed using snow water equivalent and melt simulations from the S3M Italy model, while hydrological drought conditions are examined using streamflow observations from regional monitoring agencies. This analysis explores how meteorological variability, cryospheric processes, and hydrological mechanisms interact to influence drought duration and intensity, and how these relationships have evolved over the past two decades, particularly at high elevations. By providing an integrated assessment of drought mechanisms in southern alpine glacierized basins, this work contributes to improving understanding of drought dynamics in mountain regions under ongoing climate change, with implications for the assessment and management of alpine water resources.