The EGU General Assembly 2011 conference was held in Vienna, the capital of Austria during 3-8, April this year. In the Division of Hydrological Sciences (HS), many key scientific topics and related advances were highlighted, which were flooding and droughts, glacier and thawing, soil erosion and sediment transportation, rainfall features, local water balance, landscape evolution and hydrological processes, groundwater and solute migration, vegetation dynamics and hydrological regimes, climate-water-health, regional water-use behaviors affected by climate and land use, coupled hydrologic-socioeconomic systems, best management practices based on public and stakeholder participations in water resources. All these issues, however, were put and discussed in the context of global climatic change. Consequently, several valuable and notable characteristics regarding the HS division could be concluded from the discussions, which were multiple intercrossing between different subjects and areas, multi-scales and involved diverse regions, systemic conceptions and advanced techniques as well as instruments used in researches, respectively. They were considered to provide momentous highlights facing the challenges brought by climatic and environmental changes. In the forthcoming future, as a result, three major aspects should be enhanced. First, basic research in hydrological science areas and communications between different scientific fields should be strengthened further, which were believed to be benefit for solving complicated ecological problems in virtue of advanced methods and thoughts. Second, specific scientific issues among different geographical regions should be clearly identified, which is helpful for the coherence of purpose, objects, contexts and methodology. Thirdly, more attention should be paid to systemic research, international cooperation, the developments and applications of new instruments.