Back to opportunities | Category Index
These are the intended use-case/justification for one or multiple variable groups. Opportunities are linked to relevant experiment groups. Identifying opportunities helps to provide a structure to map variables against requirements. Each opportunity description will convey why this combination of variables and experiments is important and how they contribute to impact.
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| description | In parallel to Earth's energy budget (changes), keeping track of Earth's water is another key "opportunity" that involves flows across numerous realms. The bulk of Earth's water is in the ocean, and even small changes to this reservoir will have very, very large corresponding changes across other realms. Keeping track of the very large latent energy fluxes also ties together Earth's energy and water cycles in a way that should be considered in concert |
| expected_impacts | In a closed system, the flow of water through realms should be traceable - linking terrestrial groundwater use to sea level rise for e.g. Similarly changes to ocean salinity reflect freshwater relocation either within the closed ocean system, or exported to another realm (generally through the atmospheric pathway). A holistic view of the water/energy cycles will require variables saved across realms, and doing this in a coherent way would aid their use in developing and understanding of water cycle changes, what are driving these and how comparable modelled historical changes are to our imperfect observational estimates |
| justification_of_resources | This "opportunity" should be considered alongside the parallel proposal for the "energy budget" opportunity, they complement one another |
| lead_theme | Earth System |
| minimum_ensemble_size | 3 |
| name | Water cycle/budget assessment |
| opportunity_id | 66 |
| data_request_themes | Atmosphere, Land & Land-Ice, Ocean & Sea-Ice, Earth System |
| experiment_groups | picontrol, scenarios, historical |
| mips | PMIP, DAMIP |
| time_subsets | 80ac3156-a698-11ef-914a-613c0433d878 |
| variable_groups | int_ocean_budgets, baseline_monthly, ocean_grid, seaice_budget_freshwater_monthly |