As part of the Water Institute's WaterTalks lecture series, Poornima Unnikrishnan, Researcher, Department of Systems Design Engineering will present: Atmospheric moisture tracking.
This event will be offered in person on the University of Waterloo campus in EIT 1015 and online via Zoom.
Please register: https://uwaterloo.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BQYCI6VzRNinrdJ5vcjVkQ
Atmospheric moisture recycling is the process of water evaporating from the earth’s surface, flowing through the atmosphere, and re-entering land as precipitation. Agriculture, a multibillion-dollar industry, is highly sensitive to weather and climate. The decisions related to agricultural production at all phases (near-term, mid-term, or long-term decisions) are highly dependent on the water availability to the crops. The identification of the ocean and land surface that contributes evaporation to a region’s precipitation can be of significant importance as they can be addressed and incorporated into water resources management tools and frameworks. The changes in the land use patterns and earth’s surface temperatures can alter the moisture recycle pattern across the globe which can cause adverse impacts on tropical forests, agricultural production, river flows, and wetlands. Modeling the process of atmospheric moisture transport and identifying source-sink relationships on a large scale is relatively a new research area. The models can play important roles in the analysis of variations in the relative importance of oceanic and terrestrial sources of precipitation. Here, in this Part 1 talk, we provide an overview of atmospheric moisture tracking and review the literature that explore various avenues in understanding the processes.