Water & Energy Cycle

The Water and Energy Cycle Focus Area studies the distribution, transport and transformation of water and energy within the Earth System. Since solar energy drives the water cycle and energy exchanges are modulated by the interaction of water with radiation, the energy cycle and the water cycle are intimately entwined.

The polar sea ice cover is very dynamic and is forced by winds and ocean currents. This image of the Arctic sea ice cover on March 1, 2003, obtained from the Aqua Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E), shows the combination of both temperature and the emissivity of sea ice at 89 GHz. Patterns of leads (linear openings in the sea ice) appear darker than the surrounding thick sea ice. Generally, these areas of thin ice have a higher temperature because of the warmer sea water below. The 89 GHz channel used in generating this image provides the highest spatial resolution of about 5 km. Even at this spatial resolution individual ice flows can be observed. The green, brown, and white areas over land indicate increasing elevation. The dark circle over the pole is an area that is beyond the field of view of the instrument. Credit: NASA GSFC, Alvaro Ivanoff.

The long-term goal of this focus area is to enable improved predictions of the global water and energy cycles. This key goal requires not only documenting and predicting means and trends in the rate of the Earth's water and energy cycling as well as predicting changes in the frequency and intensity of related meteorological and hydrologic events such as floods and droughts.
In the past decade NASA's water and energy research projects have yielded significant advances in our understanding of key Earth system science processes. For example, we have been able to improve rainfall quantification, as well as greatly improve hurricane prediction capability. However, many issues remain to be resolved. In the next decade this focus area will move us toward balancing the water budget at global and regional spatial scales, provide global observation capability of precipitation over the day's cycle and important land surface quantities such as soil moisture and snow quantity at mesoscale resolution. We are working on improving cloud-resolving models for use in climate models. We will gain knowledge of the major influences on variability in the water and energy cycles.

Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems

The Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems Focus Area addresses the distribution and cycling of carbon among the land, ocean, and atmospheric reservoirs and ecosystems as they are affected by humans, as they change due to their own biogeochemistry, and as they interact with climate variations. The goals are to: quantify global productivity, biomass, carbon fluxes, and changes in land cover; document and understand how the global carbon cycle, terrestrial and marine ecosystems, and land cover and use are changing; and provide useful projections of future changes in global carbon cycling and terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
Throughout the next decade, research will be needed to advance our understanding of and ability to model human-ecosystems-climate interactions so that an integrated understanding of Earth System function can be applied to our goals. These research activities will yield knowledge of the Earth's ecosystems and carbon cycle, as well as projections of carbon cycle and ecosystem responses to global environmental change.
Examples of the types of forecasts that may be possible are: the outbreak and spread of harmful algal blooms, occurrence and spread of invasive exotic species, and productivity of forest and agricultural systems. This Focus Area also will contribute to the improvement of climate projections for 50-100 years into the future by providing key inputs for climate models. This includes projections of future atmospheric CO2 and CH4 concentrations and understanding of key ecosystem and carbon cycle process controls on the climate system.
Both physical and biological processes in the ocean affect the carbon cycle. In addition, physical processes influence the net production of biological oceanography.