Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Water Science and Application Series, Volume 3. Land surface hydrology integrates various physical, chemical and biological processes that occur above, on, and below the surface of the Earth. As a result, it is critical to accurately account for land surface processes within predictive models of hydrology, meteorology, and climate. One of our main difficulties, however, concerns the broad range of spatial and temporal scales that characterize land surface hydrological processes. For example, we determine infiltration by pore scale physics, while soil hydraulic conductivity remains a field scale property. Photosynthesis, respiration, and transpiration occur at the leaf scale. Runoff is a catchment scale process, and the variability of groundwater storage is a regional scale issue. Turbulence in land-atmosphere exchanges of heat, moisture, and momentum occur on the order of seconds to minutes, while variations in land surface and air temperatures occur much more gradually: on the order of hours. The persistence of floods and droughts is seasonal to annual, and so is the effect of El Nino on regional hydrology. Long-term climate effects occur much more slowly, on the order of years to decades.

The continental hydrological cycle is one of the least understood components of the climate system. The understanding of the different processes involved is important in the fields of hydrology and meteorology.In this volume the main applications for continental hydrology are presented, including the characterization of the states of continental surfaces (water state, snow cover, etc.) using active and passive remote sensing, monitoring the Antarctic ice sheet and land water surface heights using radar altimetry, the characterization of redistributions of water masses using the GRACE mission, the potential of GNSS-R technology in hydrology, and remote sensing data assimilation in hydrological models.This book, part of a set of six volumes, has been produced by scientists who are internationally renowned in their fields. It is addressed to students (engineers, Masters, PhD) , engineers and scientists, specialists in remote sensing applied to hydrology. Through this pedagogical work, the authors contribute to breaking down the barriers that hinder the use of Earth observation data. - Provides clear and concise descriptions of modern remote sensing methods - Explores the most current remote sensing techniques with physical aspects of the measurement (theory) and their applications - Provides chapters on physical principles, measurement, and data processing for each technique described - Describes optical remote sensing technology, including a description of acquisition systems and measurement corrections to be made

General circulation models (GCMs) predict certain changes in the amounts and distribution of precipitation, but the conversion of these predictions of impacts on water resources presents novel problems in hydrologic modeling, particularly with regard to the scale of the processes involved. Therefore improved, distributed GCMs are required. New remote sensing technologies provide the necessary spatially distributed data. However, there are many attendant problems with the translation of remotely sensed signals into hydrologically relevant information. This book elucidates how to improve the representation of land surface hydrologic processes in GCMs and in regional and global scale climate studies. It is divided into five sections: Models and Data; Precipitation; Soil Moisture; Evapotranspiration; Runoff.

During geologic spans of time, Earth's shifting tectonic plates, atmosphere, freezing water, thawing ice, flowing rivers, and evolving life have shaped Earth's surface features. The resulting hills, mountains, valleys, and plains shelter ecosystems that interact with all life and provide a record of Earth surface processes that extend back through Earth's history. Despite rapidly growing scientific knowledge of Earth surface interactions, and the increasing availability of new monitoring technologies, there is still little understanding of how these processes generate and degrade landscapes. Landscapes on the Edge identifies nine grand challenges in this emerging field of study and proposes four high-priority research initiatives. The book poses questions about how our planet's past can tell us about its future, how landscapes record climate and tectonics, and how Earth surface science can contribute to developing a sustainable living surface for future generations.

This book focuses on the development of physical parameterization over the last 2 to 3 decades and provides a roadmap for its future development. It covers important physical processes: convection, clouds, radiation, land-surface, and the orographic effect. The improvement of numerical models for predicting weather and climate at a variety of places and times has progressed globally. However, there are still several challenging areas, which need to be addressed with a better understanding of physical processes based on observations, and to subsequently be taken into account by means of improved parameterization. And this is all the more important since models are increasingly being used at higher horizontal and vertical resolutions. Encouraging debate on the cloud-resolving approach or the hybrid approach with parameterized convection and grid-scale cloud microphysics and its impact on models’ intrinsic predictability, the book offers a motivating reference guide for all researchers whose work involves physical parameterization problems and numerical models.