Prof. Eric Wood

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University

10am, June 11, 2018

Room 101, Keyan Building, IAP

Abstract

In 1991, the National Research Council published an impactful study entitled “Opportunities in the Hydrologic Sciences”.  Its impact stemmed in part by having the community think in new ways about hydrology as more strongly integrated with earth and climate sciences, and new paradigms for hydrological research and hydrological educations. Central to the study were a number of critical and emerging areas — among others it included diagnostic study of the global water budget, land-atmospheric coupling, characterization of spatial variability and scaling in hydrological processes. But in last 35 years, many others areas emerged that were not seen as critical — development of distributed SVAT-type land surface models, the emergence of remote sensing as a key observational resource, data assimilation in hydrology, developments in information and computer technology, climate services (to name a few).

This seminar will address these past developments to provide the perspective for looking at critical future challenges as they relate to

(i) land surface modeling, and in particular to global modeling at scales of O(100) m,

(ii) challenges in developing and using global water and energy cycle data sets, and

(iii) the emerging new age of water and climate information.