Earth Science

Streamflow in the Columbia River Basin: Quantifying Changes Over the Period 1951‐2008 and Determining the Drivers of Those Changes
(https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2018WR024256)

Routing Application for Parallel computatIon of Discharge (RAPID) is a matrix based river routing model.

My concern is how to map ELM runoff to RAPID because the scales of these two models are very different. ELM is usually at 50km to 100km and RAPID might be around 100m. If the resolutions are different, great uncertainty might be introduced.

Litter decomposition involves series of processes.

Hydrological control nearly occurs throughout the whole decomposition process. As a result, if there is water-soluble materials in the litter, the leaching will take them out.

The water-soluble materials include Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC).

Also some particulate materials (Particulate Organic Carbon (POC), etc.) may leach out.

In most aquifer test, the hydraulic conductivity is a function of the material, but it does not explicitly consider the impact of ice content on K.
When soil or any material is partially or fully frozen, its actual K will decrease significantly. Here I want to explore how to model this impact in soil hydrology model. Special attention will be paid to the different impacts on vertical and horizontal K, respectively.

Recently we have published a paper on Journal of Advanced Modeling of Earth System.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019MS001792

This is also a personal milestone because it is the last chapter of my PhD thesis. Below I will provide some details of this work.

In many of my earlier posts, I have discussed that our Earth system is always evolving in a three dimensional domain. The water flows, the atmosphere flows as well.
However, in our numerical simulations, we do not always use 3D method. Sometimes we just don’t felt it necessary. For example, we always assume rain drops on land surface in vertical direction even though rain can attack our windows with an angel.
In some other scenarios, we don’t use 3D because of computational resources. We can build a fully 3D model. But it is not useable if we don’t have the computer power to run it.
Land surface model is an important component in ESM. But current generation of LSM is 1D instead of 3D. There are many reason…

Recently I started a series to discuss my own publications. The problem is I only have limited publications.

So I decided to start a new series: paper discussion of others' publications.

At PNNL, I have co-chaired the YSPD for one year and received lots of feedbacks on paper discussions. I think it might help other researchers as well.

Here are some guidelines:

I will only provide comments on papers I was not a reviewer so it in unofficial and not credential.I will be straightforward if possible.I may also comments on models and method. Thank you.

As an Earth science researcher, I talk a lot about climate change. But most of time I was basically sending message stating that climate change is real and bad. I didn't spend much time thinking and explaining what should we do to battle climate change.

Certainly we can slow down our pace in terms of civilization developments, which will slow down climate change maybe. For example, if we slow down the rate population moving from rural area to urban area, it helps because it is likely to decrease emission.

There are many thing we should slow down:

Stop building big citiesStop building highwayStop building houses, especially in natural systemReduce meat consumptionSlow down vehicle productionReduce ocean explorationStop using non renewable energy All above could fight climate change, to some extent. But that is not enough because it is only slowing the trend down.
Something else we should do to reverse the engine Plant more trees for sure.Remove highway and build high speed trainsRemo…