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Interagency Integrated Water Cycle Group and the U.S. Global Energy and Water Exchanges Program Office
USGCRP’s Integrated Water Cycle Group (IWCG) and U.S. Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) Program Office work together to coordinate research that will help us better understand the effects of global change on the water cycle and the impacts of those changes through collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches.
The IWCG seeks to
- Coordinate research relevant to understanding the integrated water cycle, how it changes in response to short-term and long-term perturbations, and the associated local, regional, and global impacts of those changes;
- Advance capabilities and research infrastructure that support water cycle observation, modeling, and predictability at a range of scales; and
- Develop approaches to apply and translate our understanding and inform decisions concerning resilience and water security.
U.S. GEWEX Program Office at USGCRP
The USGCRP established the U.S. GEWEX Program Office in September 2019.
The U.S. GEWEX Program Office supports U.S. interagency efforts, focused on Federal water and energy cycle research, that align scientifically with the GEWEX core project of the World Climate Research Program. It exists under the auspices of USGCRP to provide infrastructure and support for U.S. interagency activities relevant to water cycle science and global change, under the direction of USGCRP’s IWCG.
The U.S GEWEX Program Office facilitates the coordination of interagency activities within the IWCG, through regular discussions and meetings of program managers from the various USGCRP agencies interested in science relevant to GEWEX. This program manager group is chaired by two program managers (currently from NASA and DOE) and coordinated by the U.S. GEWEX Program Office.
Interagency activities are undertaken with the goal of an enhanced predictive understanding of the water cycle and energy fluxes of the changing Earth and global climate system, using satellite and surface-based observations, global and regional process-resolving models, and the resulting diagnostics and data.
The focus on water cycle and energy exchange is predominantly on multiscale atmospheric processes and surface-atmosphere interactions at various scales, including phenomena such as local recycling of water, moisture transport, cloud-precipitation interactions, and changes to radiative balance.
The U.S. GEWEX Program Office coordinates with the program manager group to support activities that address scientific objectives including (but not limited to) understanding and prediction of current and future water cycle extremes; land-atmosphere interactions; the role of clouds in a changing water cycle; teleconnections between water cycle phenomena and changes in other parts of the Earth system (e.g., how changes in the Arctic may affect mid-latitude storms); and the impacts of large scale human-Earth system interactions (e.g., land management and irrigation) on regional and global water cycles.
If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Drew Story.