Land can retain about 1/4 monthly precipitation
2021-05-18
(Press-News.org) To support growing human and animal life, freshwater sources must continuously supply water. Freshwater from lakes, rivers, and underground is mainly recharged by rainfall. Ground reservoirs can store rainwater over time, depending on that location's storage capability. However, estimating freshwater storage capability (FSC) is still a challenge due to few observation opportunities and methods to measure and quantify FSC.
Prof. Xing Yuan and his Ph.D. student Enda Zhu, from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, developed and applied a new metric that characterizes the "inertia" of water after rainfall. This method allows better FSC analysis based on satellite data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). Researchers simulated their new algorithm using the Community Land Model version 5 (CLM5) for 194 major river basins around the world. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences has accepted the study, its results, and supporting data.
"The FSC of river basins which displays the proportion of precipitation that can be retained in land is closely related with the hydrological memory." said Prof. Yuan. "Larger FSC means longer hydrological memory, which will have an impact on local and regional weather and climate through the land-atmosphere couple."
Results show that, on average, global land surfaces can retain over one quarter of monthly precipitation based on GRACE observation. The CLM5 simulation represents a similar global distribution. Using this new metric, Small FSC areas have wetter conditions and a higher vegetation density, whereas large FSC areas have drier climates.
This metric observes evaporation using satellite observations. Compared with the monthly FSC, the amount of water retained within land is higher at a shorter time scale due to less evaporation in low FSC areas. Across multiple time scales, the root zone contributes to about 40% of the global land FSC.
While this study, published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, primarily focuses on rainfall, precipitation that falls as snow is important, despite most frozen water content sitting above the ground surface. Snow contributes to more than 20% of land FSC, especially in high latitudes.
"This work is worthy of further attentions for water resources management and hydrological prediction," explained Prof. Yuan.
INFORMATION:
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-05-18
A research group at the University of Córdoba studied the molecular properties of the holm oak (Quercus ilex) in search of trees that are more resistant to drought and root rot.
One of the biggest problems affecting holm oaks is drought. The holm oak (Quercus ilex) boasts a high natural adaptability and resistance to inclement weather conditions in dry environments with high temperatures. However, drought is one of the main causes of mortality in holm oak plantations, with "drought stress" also an important factor contributing to root rot.
This is a multifactorial syndrome that causes the decay and death of holm oaks, consisting of a combination ...
2021-05-18
Scientists have developed a mathematical model that predicts how the number and effects of bacterial mutations leading to drug resistance will influence the success of antibiotic treatments.
Their model, described today in the journal eLife, provides new insights on the emergence of drug resistance in clinical settings and hints at how to design novel treatment strategies that help avoid this resistance occurring.
Antibiotic resistance is a significant public health challenge, caused by changes in bacterial cells that allow them to survive drugs that ...
2021-05-18
Researchers of Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) developed a new approach to determine the best electrode materials composition for Solid-state lithium-ion batteries. The results of the study were published in the first quartile journal Nanomaterials, MDPI. The Russian Science Foundation supports the project.
The development of miniature devices such as sensors and Internet of things (IoT) devices requires establishing small and complex power supplies with a high energy density. According to experts, traditional technologies for lithium-ion battery production reach their limits. It is difficult to reduce the size and control the shape of the power ...
2021-05-18
Analysing the forces at work behind the obstructions that cause heart attacks is crucial for identifying patients at risk of these events, says a study published today in eLife.
The findings suggest that bringing such biomechanical analyses into clinical practice could allow cardiologists to predict a future heart attack in patients by simulating the distribution of stress within diseased heart vessels.
A myocardial infarction, commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when the supply of blood to the heart is blocked by a blood clot or similar obstruction. A build-up of fatty deposits (lipids) over time forms plaques in the heart's arteries. If the plaque ruptures, it can form a blood clot that blocks the arteries and causes a heart attack.
Previous ...
2021-05-18
A research group led by Prof. LUO Tianzhi from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, collaborating with Prof. WANG Zhengzhi's team from Wuhan University, explored the natural defenses in the tail spike of mantis shrimps and left chela of hermit crabs.
They revealed the chemical gradients from nanometer to centimeter and the correlation between micro-structure and mechanical properties. Also, they confirmed toughening mechanism and optimized structure principles through a 3D printing technique and finite-element analysis. The results were published in ACS Applied Materials ...
2021-05-18
HERSHEY, Pa. -- According to the World Health Organization, cervical cancer is the fourth most common form of cancer affecting women worldwide, and those in developing countries face a higher risk of dying from it. If detected early, cervical cancer responds well to treatment, however not everyone receives cancer screenings.
A team of researchers, including those from Penn State College of Medicine, took a closer look at cervical cancer in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to determine the prevalence and key factors that influence cancer screenings. The group found that despite high mortality rates, cancer screenings are substantially low, and there are multiple reasons why.
In a new study, published in Cancer ...
2021-05-18
Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental condition involving impaired social abilities, and this makes it a fascinating subject for neuroscientists like Prof. Teiichi Furuichi of the Tokyo University of Science who study the neuroscience of social behavior. Prof. Furuichi and his colleagues have previously worked on developing mouse models of autism to unravel the condition's neurochemical mechanisms, and in a paper recently published in the prestigious Journal of Neuroscience, they provide evidence that a genetic mutation associated with autism can impair the release of a peptide called oxytocin that plays an important role in regulating social behavior. This finding promises to broaden our understanding of the neurobiology of social behavior.
The gene that Prof. ...
2021-05-18
In the field of international business research, lobbying is considered a legitimate and legal political action conducted in a developed economy. Bribery, on the other hand, is seen as an outright corrupt practice in an emerging economy.
In a study published in the March issue of the journal Business & Society, a researcher from The University of Texas at Dallas examined the gray area between lobbying and bribery among multinational companies, especially in countries where lobbying is not regulated strongly or institutional development is insufficient.
The analysis found that firms based in developed countries, as opposed to developing countries or transition economies, are more likely to influence the institutional ...
2021-05-18
Counselling sessions improve long term mental health in primary-school aged children, according to a new study. The research has implications for reversing declining mental health in young people in a COVID-19 era.
A team from the University of Exeter and the University of Cambridge worked in partnership with Place2Be to assess the longer-term impact of its school-based service.
The study assessed the impact of Place2Be's programme, in which trained counsellors operated in 171 schools nationwide in the academic year 2015/16. Under the scheme, children could ...
2021-05-18
The researchers found that the variants have a similar surface stability as the wild type virus under laboratory conditions, but can be effectively eliminated by disinfection and thorough hand washing, heat or alcohol treatment. They report their results in the Journal of Infectious Diseases from 16 May 2021.
For this study, the team from the Department for Molecular and Medical Virology and the Chair of Materials Discovery and Interfaces at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) cooperated with the European Virus Bioinformatics Center Jena, the University Hospital Duisburg-Essen and Paracelsus Medical University Nuremberg.
The ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Land can retain about 1/4 monthly precipitation
