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How will the global water cycle evolve in response to global warming?
Posted on July 18th, 2009Categorized as Earth System, Social-Ecological Systems Tagged as global water cycle, ocean circulation, oceans, precipitation
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No element of the climate system has as much impact on society as the water cycle, yet we remain ignorant of the largest part of the water cycle, that over the oceans. The oceans are the main reservoir of free water on the planet, the source of nearly 90% of global evaporation and the site of ~80% of global precipitation. A mere 1% of Atlantic ocean precipitation matches the discharge of the Mississippi River. Water evaporates more readily from a warmer ocean, so an intensification of the water cycle is expected with anthropogenic warming. The signature of the water cycle within the oceans is in the distribution of salinity, which must be monitored in the future if we are to understand how the water cycle is changing. In addition, salinity influences ocean mixing and circulation and thus the ability of the ocean to absorb, store and transport heat and CO2. Can we initiate an observing system for upper ocean salinity that will help us to understand and predict the future evolution of the global water cycle? Can we develop a better understanding of the smaller terrestrial water cycle, where plants and drainage basins are responding to rising warmth and CO2? Can we understand the interactions between ocean, atmosphere and the high latitude ice sheets that are leading to increased melting and discharge to the ocean? The global water cycle is truly a central unifying problem for climate change, and of fundamental importance to society.
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How water is transformed globally between the ocean, land and the atmosphere?
Posted on July 20th, 2009Categorized as Earth System Tagged as atmosphere, oceans, precipitation, soil, water
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Water is the most important nature factor for human life. It influences the human life directly. It is also the main driver of the climate. Although we do not have the global water budget information yet, but very close to have it. What we need is from space to monitor globally the atmosphere water content, the ocean salinity, the precipitation, the land soil moisture, the ground water run off, the polar ice melt, the underground water distribution and variations. We already have GRACE mission to monitoring the underground water distribution and variations, the polar ice melting, SMOS mission and SMAP mission will be launched soon to monitoring the land soil moisture and ocean salinity, FY3 and other weather satellites to monitoring the atmosphere water content, etc. However, the data are not integrately studied together and a more complete constelation of these kinds of satellites with higher tempo resolution are needed if we want a complete answer of this question. A global cooperation with participation of many governments like US, Europe, Russia, China, Japan and India is necessary!
