We are concerned with wave equations associated with some Liouville-type problems on compact surfaces, focusing on sinh-Gordon equation and general Toda systems. Our aim is on one side to develop the analysis for wave equations associated with the latter problems and second, to substantially refine the analysis initiated in Chanillo and Yung (Adv Math 235:187–207, 2013) concerning the mean field equation. In particular, by exploiting the variational analysis recently derived for Liouville-type problems we prove global existence in time for the subcritical case and we give general blow-up criteria for the supercritical and critical case. The strategy is mainly based on fixed point arguments and improved versions of the Moser–Trudinger inequality.
