Xiaodong Chen

Teaching Demonstration

Overview of Earth’s water cycle 

Xiaodong Chen 

Monday, May 13

NWC 1120 / 10:00 AM

Water cycle is a critical component in the Earth system, interacting with a variety of other Earth system components. Within the water cycle, different water storages possess unique properties and connect to diverse elements in the Earth system. Meanwhile, water fluxes connect these storages at different time scales and complete the water cycle. In this introductory hydrometeorological session, we will go through the Earth’s water cycle and provide an overview of the atmospheric, oceanic, and terrestrial water budgets. We will see how the idea of mass balance can help us identify the “reservoirs and flows” in each of these systems, and how these systems eventually get connected to achieve water balance at the global scale. In this process, we will also meet two types of water movement across the land-atmosphere interface: precipitation and evapotranspiration, two of the major study topics in hydrometeorology.