Climate change is speeding up the water cycle

A new quantitative framework for characterizing on-land water cycle intensity (WCI) showed that changes in river discharge patterns across the lower United States over the past seven decades are linked to climate change processes driving faster rates of ocean evaporation, terrestrial evapotranspiration, and precipitation. The framework found that WCI increased over most of the U.S. between the time periods of 1945-1974 and 1985-2014, primarily due to increased precipitation. This framework will help improve global water forecasting models.

Data Sources: Various in situ hydrology networks

water-cycle.jpg
NASA

Publications

Huntington, T.G., Weiskel, P.K., Wolock, D.M., McCabe, G.J., (2018) A new indicator framework for quantifying the intensity of the terrestrial water cycle. Journal of Hydrology, Vol 559, 361-372. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2018.02.048

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