CIV 442

HYDROLOGY
LECTURE 3A:
HYDRO-METEOROLOGY

Prof. Evan K. Paleologos

Civil Engineering
HYDRO-METEOROLOGY
 The Water
Planet
WATER ON THE PLANET
Viewed from
space, the most
striking feature of
our planet is the
water. In both
liquid and frozen
form, it covers
75% of the Earth’s
surface. It fills the
sky with clouds.
Water is
practically
everywhere on
Earth, from inside
the planet's rocky
crust to inside the http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1925.html
cells of the human
body.
Up to 60% of the human
adult body is water.
WATER IN OUR BODY
Water serves a number
of essential functions to
keep us all going

It is a vital nutrient to the

life of every cell, acts
first as a building
material.
It regulates our internal
body temperature by
sweating and respiration.
The carbohydrates and
proteins that our bodies
use as food are
metabolized and
transported by water in
the bloodstream.
Babies contain more water when born they have
It assists in flushing waste about 78%. By one year of age, that amount drops
mainly through urination. to about 65%.
It acts as a shock absorber
The Water Planet

WATER ON THE PLANET

96.5% of the Earth’s water is in the
oceans. From the rest, 1.7% is
stored in the polar icecaps,
glaciers, and permanent snow, and
another 1.7% is stored in
groundwater, lakes, rivers, streams,
and soil.

Only 0.001% of the water on Earth

exists as water vapor in the
atmosphere. Despite its small
amount, this water vapor has a huge
influence on the planet. Water
vapor is a major driver of the
Earth’s weather and climate as it
travels around the globe,
transporting heat with it.

For human needs, the amount of

freshwater for drinking and
agriculture is particularly
important. Freshwater exists in
lakes, rivers, groundwater, and
frozen as snow and ice.

Estimates of groundwater are

particularly difficult to make, and WATER VAPOR MOVIE:
they vary widely. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GISSTemperature/Images/seviri_water
_vapor_720p_best.mov
SNOW STORM HITS THE MIDDLE EAST (12 DEC-15 DEC 2013):
Groundwater may constitute
http://www.eumetsat.int/website/home/Images/ImageLibrary/DAT_2087876.html
anywhere from approximately 22 to
30% of fresh water, with ice
Studies have shown that
evaporation—the process by
which water changes from a
liquid to a gas—from oceans,
etc. provides nearly 90% of the
moisture in our atmosphere. WATER CYCLE
Most of the remaining 10% found
in the atmosphere is released
by plants through transpiration.
Plants take in water through
their roots, then release it
through small pores on the
underside of their leaves.

A very small portion of water

vapor enters the atmosphere
through sublimation, the
process by which water changes
directly from a solid (ice or
snow) to a gas.

Together, evaporation,
transpiration, and sublimation,
plus volcanic emissions, account
for almost all the water vapor in
the atmosphere that isn’t
inserted through human
activities.
 WATER CYCLE
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Water/

After the water enters the lower atmosphere, rising air

currents carry it upward, often high into the atmosphere,
where the air is cooler. In the cool air, water vapor is more
likely to condense from a gas to a liquid to form cloud
droplets. Cloud droplets can grow and produce
precipitation (including rain, snow, sleet, freezing rain,
and hail), which is the primary mechanism for transporting
water from the atmosphere back to the Earth’s surface.

When precipitation falls over the land surface, it follows

various routes. Some of it evaporates, returning to the
atmosphere; some seeps into the ground as soil moisture or
groundwater; and some runs off into rivers and streams.
Almost all of the water eventually flows into the oceans or
other bodies of water, where the cycle continues.
 WATER CYCLE
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Water/

Groundwater is found in two layers of the soil, the “zone of

aeration,” where gaps in the soil are filled with both air
and water, and, further down, the “zone of saturation,”
where the gaps are completely filled with water.

The amount of water in the atmosphere at any moment in

time is only 12,900 cubic kilometers, a very small fraction
of Earth’s total water supply.

If it were to completely rain out, atmospheric moisture

would cover the Earth’s surface to a depth of only 2.5
centimeters. However, far more water—in fact, some
495,000 cubic kilometers of it—are cycled through the
atmosphere every year.
 WATER Water continually evaporates, condenses,
precipitates, and on a global basis, evaporation
and

approximately equals precipitation. Because of this

CYCLE equality, the total amount of water vapor in the
atmosphere remains approximately the same over time.

Over the continents, precipitation exceeds evaporation,

and conversely, over the oceans, evaporation exceeds
precipitation.

In the oceans, the continual excess of evaporation versus

precipitation would eventually leave the oceans empty if
they were not being replenished. Oceans are they being
Sea level has been rising over the past
century, partly due to thermal expansion of replenished, largely through runoff from the land areas.
the ocean as it warms, and partly due to the
melting of glaciers and ice caps.
(Graph ©2010 Australian Commonwealth
Scientific and Research Organization.) The ocean water level has risen the last 100 years both
because of warming of the oceans, causing water to
expand and increase in volume, and because more water
has been entering the ocean than the amount leaving it
through evaporation or other means. A primary cause for
the increased mass of water entering oceans is the
melting of land ice (ice sheets and glaciers).
 CLIMATE CHANGE AND
PRECIPITATION
The most serious issue that we face are the
potential changes in the Earth’s water cycle due
to climate change. These changes may seriously
affect atmospheric water vapor concentrations,
clouds, precipitation patterns, and runoff and
stream flow patterns.

For example, as the lower atmosphere becomes

One expected effect of climate change will be an increase in
warmer, evaporation rates will increase,
precipitation intensity: a larger proportion of rain will fall in a shorterresulting in an increase in the amount of
amount of time than it has historically. Blue represents areas where
climate models predict an increase in intensity by the end of the 21stmoisture circulating throughout the troposphere
century, brown represents a predicted decrease. (lower atmosphere). An observed consequence
of higher water vapor concentrations is the
increased frequency of intense precipitation
events, mainly over land areas.

In parts of the Northern Hemisphere, an earlier

arrival of spring conditions is leading to earlier
snowmelt and river flows. As a consequence,
seasons with the highest water demand,
typically summer and fall, are being impacted by
a reduced availability of fresh water.
Changes in water runoff into rivers and streams are another expected
consequence of climate change by the late 21st Century. This map shows
predicted increases in runoff in blue, and decreases in brown and red.
 CLIMATE CHANGE AND DROUGHT
Warmer temperatures have led to
increased drying of the land
surface in some areas, with the
effect of an increased incidence
and severity of drought.

The Palmer Drought Severity

Index, which is a measure of soil
Shifts in the water cycle occurred over the moisture using precipitation
past century due to a combination of natural
variations and human forcings. From 1900 to
2002, droughts worsened in Sub-Saharan and
measurements and rough estimates
southern Africa, eastern Brazil, and Iran
(brown). Over the same period western
of changes in evaporation, has
Russia, south-eastern South America,
Scandinavia, and the southern United States
shown that from 1900 to 2002, the
had less severe droughts (green).
Sahel region of Africa has been
experiencing harsher drought
conditions.
CHICAGO, JAN 2014
OBSERVING THE WATER CYCLE
Orbiting satellites are now collecting data relevant to all
aspects of the hydrologic cycle, including evaporation,
transpiration, condensation, precipitation, and runoff. NASA
even has one satellite, Aqua, named specifically for the
information it is collecting about the many components of the
water cycle.
 OBSERVING THE WATER CYCLE
Satellites also collect data about the clouds. The cloud
data include the height and area of clouds, the liquid
water they contain, and the sizes of cloud droplets and
ice particles. The size of cloud particles affects how
they reflect and absorb incoming sunlight, and the
reflectivity (albedo) of clouds plays a major role in
Earth’s energy balance.

Satellites also monitor sea ice. Sea ice is important to

the Earth because it can insulate the underlying liquid
water against heat loss to the often frigid overlying
polar atmosphere and because it reflects sunlight that
would otherwise be available to warm the ocean.

The joint NASA and French Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and

ICESat’s precise observation of the
surface elevation of Arctic sea ice
Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) is
enabled measurement of ice thickness. providing new insight into the role that clouds and
These images show that sea ice thinned
from fall 2003 to fall 2008. Dark blue atmospheric aerosols (particles like dust and pollution)
areas are thin ice, white areas are thick
ice, gray regions are land, and light blue
play in regulating Earth’s weather, climate, and air
south of the ice pack represents open quality.
water.
WATER ELSEWHERE?
Credits: Mars Geronimo Villanueva/NASA

WATER ELSEWHERE?
Water On Mars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Ma
rs

Dr. Villanueva, Goddard Space Center, March 6, 2015:

87% of the water was lost in space, and 13% remains as ice.

The Mars Global Surveyor acquired this image of the Martian north
polar ice cap in early northern summer.
 WATER The Cassini probe sent to study Saturn showed in 2005 that its moon Enceladus has geysers sending off ice
and dust out into orbit.

ELSEWHERE?

Cassini image of ice geysers on

Enceladus (NASA/JPL/SSI)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3APIA17198-Enceladus-20151026hd.webm
 The Hubble Space Telescope showed that Jupiter’s moon, Europa, also has water
WATER jets.
Europa is slightly smaller than the Moon. It is the smoothest known object in the Solar

ELSEWHERE?
System, lacking large-scale features such as mountains and craters.
Scientists' consensus is that a layer of liquid water exists beneath Europa's surface,
and that heat from tidal flexing allows the subsurface ocean to remain liquid.

It is estimated that in
Europa the outer crust
of solid ice is
approximately 10–30 km
thick, and a liquid
ocean underneath of
about 100 km depth.

This leads to a volume

of Europa's oceans’
water which is two or
three times the volume
of Earth's oceans.

UV observations from Hubble show the size of water vapor plumes coming from
Europa’s south pole (Artist’s impression. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M.
Kornmesser)
http
://www.universetoday.com/107144/hubble-discovers-water-plumes
-erupting-from-europa/#ixzz2r3akU1rn
 WATER ELSEWHERE?
Announced January 20, 2014

“Stardust sounds magical enough as it is, but now scientists have

for the first time observed that it contains water—which, in turn,
could suggest that life is universal.
John Bradley, from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in
California, took a very close look at interplanetary dust particles
that were found in the Earth's stratosphere. High-resolution
microscopy revealed tiny pockets of water in the tiny specks of
dust—each of which themselves measured less than 25-
micrometres, half the width of a human hair.

The dust is mostly made of silicates, which contains oxygen. As it

travels through space, it encounters the solar wind. This stream of
charged particles including high-energy hydrogen ions is ejected
from the sun's atmosphere. When the two collide, hydrogen and
oxygen combine to make water.

The new findings suggest that stardust contains all the basic
ingredients needed for life, meaning that life can exist elsewhere.

A grain of stardust that was analyzed and

found to contain trapped water (Jan 2014).
 End Lecture Notes

Photo: 03 Jan 2015