Animation of 40 years of CONUS404 2D variables: outgoing longwave radiation (white), precipitation rate (blue to yellow indicating low to high value), and water vapor mixing ratio at 2 m (brown to green indicating low to high value). Fields representing time scales from hour to decade are shown to illustrate the transition from weather to climate, which highlights the advantage of the CONUS404 dataset for research topics across time scales. Courtesy of NSF NCAR CONUS404 and CISL ViSR teams. CONUS404 Data Set: rda.ucar.edu/datasets/d559000/ Visualization Software: www.vapor.ucar.edu
Water Cycle Applications Program
Improving Water and Food Security by Building Knowledge and Tools for the Water Cycle
Water Cycle Applications Program
Improving Water and Food Security by Building Knowledge and Tools for the Water Cycle
The goal of the Water Cycle Applications Program is to provide critical information for high-impact weather, flood warning, and water-resource decision makers through directed and basic research in hydrology, land-atmosphere interactions, and atmospheric forecasting. This involves detailed cloud-process modeling, streamflow simulation, and winter-weather research. This work employs a combination of models, AI, and observations that connect systems understanding to practical applications.
We work with local to international water-related organizations, crosscutting water, energy, agriculture, and infrastructure applications to meet a wide variety of challenges and applications.
Society’s needs for water resources, flood warnings, and precipitation event prediction are growing rapidly. Earth’s water supply is critical to agricultural and industrial practices now and into the next century. We are motivated to broaden this research area to meet the needs of national (federal, state, county and municipal) and international organizations in the public and private sectors, and to make impactful contributions to water-cycle science.