Dr Tim Trent of Earth Observation Science group has won an ESA Living Planet Fellowship to investigate long-term changes in the hydrological cycle.
Water vapour is an essential greenhouse gas in the Earth climate system, acting as a natural feedback mechanism for carbon dioxide forcing. Critical to the development of cloud and precipitation, water vapour also has a significant influence and impact on surface fluxes and radiative balance. Water vapour is considered to be under natural control as it is sufficiently abundant and shortâlived.
Under climate change, water vapour is expected to increase at a rate of 6%/K/decade (under constant relative humidity) in line with the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship. However, when it comes to precipitation, there is no simple global correlation with changes in temperature. Therefore, understanding the links between the residence time of water vapour in relationship to trends in global precipitation has great importance for climate studies.
Dr. Trent’s fellowship proposal was entitled “Water cyclE changes characterised from ATmospHeric moisturE Recycling (WEATHER).” The fellowship will bring together satellite and reanalysis datasets that represent water in different phases or stages within the hydrological cycle. This fellowship will also include new state-of-the-art satellite measurements of stable water vapour isotopologues, which offer the potential to detect changes in atmospheric moisture pathways.
The figure shows a comparison of the recycling rate of atmospheric moisture from (a) an ensemble climate model runs produced for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6), as part of the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, and (b) an ensemble of satellite observations measurements and reanalysis.
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