Remote Sensing of Precipitation: Volume 2

Precipitation is a well-recognized pillar in global water and energy balances. An accurate and timely understanding of its characteristics at the global, regional, and local scales is indispensable for a clearer understanding of the mechanisms underlying the Earth’s atmosphere–ocean complex system. Precipitation is one of the elements that is documented to be greatly affected by climate change. In its various forms, precipitation comprises a primary source of freshwater, which is vital for the sustainability of almost all human activities. Its socio-economic significance is fundamental in managing this natural resource effectively, in applications ranging from irrigation to industrial and household usage. Remote sensing of precipitation is pursued through a broad spectrum of continuously enriched and upgraded instrumentation, embracing sensors which can be ground-based (e.g., weather radars), satellite-borne (e.g., passive or active space-borne sensors), underwater (e.g., hydrophones), aerial, or ship-borne

Using Remote Sensing Techniques to Improve Hydrological Predictions in a Rapidly Changing World

Remotely sensed geophysical datasets are being produced at increasingly fast rates to monitor various aspects of the Earth system in a rapidly changing world. The efficient and innovative use of these datasets to understand hydrological processes in various climatic and vegetation regimes under anthropogenic impacts has become an important challenge, but with a wide range of research opportunities. The ten contributions in this Special Issue have addressed the following four research topics: (1) Evapotranspiration estimation; (2) rainfall monitoring and prediction; (3) flood simulations and predictions; and (4) monitoring of ecohydrological processes using remote sensing techniques. Moreover, the authors have provided broader discussions on how to capitalize on state-of-the-art remote sensing techniques to improve hydrological model simulations and predictions, to enhance their skills in reproducing processes for the fast-changing world

Remote Sensing of Precipitation: Part II

Precipitation is a well-recognized pillar in the global water and energy balances. The accurate and timely understanding of its characteristics at the global, regional and local scales is indispensable for a clearer insight on the mechanisms underlying the Earth’s atmosphere-ocean complex system. Precipitation is one of the elements that is documented to be greatly affected by climate change. In its various forms, precipitation comprises the primary source of freshwater, which is vital for the sustainability of almost all human activities. Its socio-economic significance is fundamental in managing this natural resource effectively, in applications ranging from irrigation to industrial and household usage. Remote sensing of precipitation is pursued through a broad spectrum of continuously enriched and upgraded instrumentation, embracing sensors which can be ground-based (e.g., weather radars), satellite-borne (e.g., passive or active space-borne sensors), underwater (e.g., hydrophones), aerial, or ship-borne. This volume hosts original research contributions on several aspects of remote sensing of precipitation, including applications which embrace the use of remote sensing in tackling issues such as precipitation estimation, seasonal characteristics of precipitation and frequency analysis, assessment of satellite precipitation products, storm prediction, rain microphysics and microstructure, and the comparison of satellite and numerical weather prediction precipitation products

Lower Atmosphere Meteorology

The Atmosphere Special Issue “Lower Atmosphere Meteorology” deals with the meteorological processes that occur in the layer of the atmosphere close to the surface. The interaction between the biosphere and the atmosphere is made through the lower layer and can greatly influence living beings and materials. The analysis of the meteorological parameters provides a better understanding of processes within the lower atmosphere and involved in air pollution, climate, and weather. The mixed layer height, the wind speed, and the air parcel trajectory have a relevant interest due to their marked impact on population and energy production. The research also comprises aerosols, clouds, and precipitation, analysing their spatiotemporal variations. This issue addresses features of gases in the atmosphere and anthropogenic greenhouse emission estimates, which are also conditioned by the lower atmosphere meteorology

Emerging Hydro-Climatic Patterns, Teleconnections and Extreme Events in Changing World at Different Timescales

This Special Issue is expected to advance our understanding of these emerging patterns, teleconnections, and extreme events in a changing world for more accurate prediction or projection of their changes especially on different spatial–time scales

Proceedings Of The 18th Annual Meeting Of The Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (Aogs 2021)

The 18th Annual Meeting of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS 2021) was held from 1st to 6th August 2021. This proceedings volume includes selected extended abstracts from a challenging array of presentations at this conference. The AOGS Annual Meeting is a leading venue for professional interaction among researchers and practitioners, covering diverse disciplines of geosciences

Energy and Water Cycles in the Third Pole

As the most prominent and complicated terrain on the globe, the Tibetan Plateau (TP) is often called the “Roof of the World”, “Third Pole” or “Asian Water Tower”. The energy and water cycles in the Third Pole have great impacts on the atmospheric circulation, Asian monsoon system and global climate change. On the other hand, the TP and the surrounding higher elevation area are also experiencing evident and rapid environmental changes under the background of global warming. As the headwater area of major rivers in Asia, the TP’s environmental changes—such as glacial retreat, snow melting, lake expanding and permafrost degradation—pose potential long-term threats to water resources of the local and surrounding regions. To promote quantitative understanding of energy and water cycles of the TP, several field campaigns, including GAME/Tibet, CAMP/Tibet and TORP, have been carried out. A large amount of data have been collected to gain a better understanding of the atmospheric boundary layer structure, turbulent heat fluxes and their coupling with atmospheric circulation and hydrological processes. The focus of this reprint is to present recent advances in quantifying land–atmosphere interactions, the water cycle and its components, energy balance components, climate change and hydrological feedbacks by in situ measurements, remote sensing or numerical modelling approaches in the “Third Pole” region

A Model for Continental-Scale Water Erosion and Sediment Transport and Its Application to the Yellow River Basin

Quantifying suspended sediment discharge at large catchment scales has significant implications for various research fields such as water quality, global carbon and nutrient cycle, agriculture sustainability, and landscape evolution. There is growing evidence that climate warming is accelerating the water cycle, leading to changes in precipitation and runoff and increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, which could lead to intensive erosion and sediment discharge. However, suspended sediment discharge is still rarely represented in regional climate models because it depends not only on the sediment transport capacity based on streamflow characteristics but also on the sediment availability in the upstream basin. This thesis introduces a continental-scale Atmospheric and Hydrological-Sediment Modelling System (AHMS-SED), which overcomes the limitations of previous large-scale water erosion models. Specifically, AHMS-SED includes a complete representation of key hydrological, erosion and sediment transport processes such as runoff and sediment generation, flow and sediment routing, sediment deposition, gully erosion and river irrigation. In this thesis, we focus on developing and applying AHMS-SED in the Yellow River Basin of China, an arid and semi-arid region known for its wide distribution of loess and the highest soil erosion rate in the world. There are three key issues involving the model development and application: human perturbation (irrigation) of the water cycle, the uncertainty of precipitation forcing on the water discharge and the large-scale water erosion and sediment transport. This thesis addresses all these three issues in the following way. First, a new irrigation module is integrated into the Atmospheric and Hydrological Modelling System (AHMS). The model is calibrated and validated using in-situ and remote sensing observations. By incorporating the irrigation module into the simulation, a more realistic hydrological response was obtained near the outlet of the Yellow River Basin. Second, an evaluation of six precipitation-reanalysis products is performed based on observed precipitation and model-simulated river discharge by the AHMS for the Yellow River Basin. The hydrological model is driven with each of the precipitation-reanalysis products in two ways, one with the rainfall-runoff parameters recalibrated and the other without. Our analysis contributes to better quantifying the reliability of hydrological simulations and the improvement of future precipitation-reanalysis products. Third, a regional-scale water erosion and sediment transport model, referred to as AHMS-SED, is developed and applied to predicting continental-scale fluvial transport in the Yellow River Basin. This model couples the AHMS with the CASCade 2-Dimensional SEDiment (CASC2D-SED) and takes into account gully erosion, a process that strongly affects the sediment supply in the Chinese Loess Plateau. The AHMS-SED is then applied to simulate water erosion and sediment processes in the Yellow River Basin for a period of eight years, from 1979 to 1987. Overall, the results demonstrate the good performance of the AHMS-SED and the upland sediment discharge equation based on rainfall erosivity and gully area index. AHMS-SED is also used to predict the evolution of sediment transport in the Yellow River Basin under specific climate change scenarios. The model results indicate that changes in precipitation will have a significant impact on sediment discharge, while increased irrigation will reduce the sediment discharge from the Yellow River

Flood Forecasting Using Machine Learning Methods

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue Flood Forecasting Using Machine Learning Methods that was published in Wate