Research
The overarching research theme in our group focuses on improving our fundamental understanding of the terrestrial and atmospheric branches of the hydrologic cycle. We seek to understand the mean states and fluxes between terrestrial and atmospheric reservoirs as well as the spatial and temporal variability in these processes. Our studies span a range of space and time scales to allow for improved understanding of historical climate patterns, real-time diagnosis of hydrologic processes, and extension to understanding and predicting future climate change and its connection to water resources. A primary objective of this work is to ultimately improve our ability to manage water resources and mitigate the effects of environmental hazards.
To address these topics, the tools we use include: multi-spectral remote sensing, distributed hydrologic modeling, coupled land-atmosphere modeling, atmospheric/climate modeling, radiative transfer modeling, data assimilation techniques, and high-performance parallel computing.
Recent and Ongoing Research Projects
- Investigation of land-atmosphere interactions in snow-dominated mountainous terrain (Sponsored by NSF Hydrologic Sciences Program)
- Characterizing variability and uncertainty in mid-latitude montane water and energy cycle climatology for improving NEWS products (Sponsored by NASA NEWS Progam)
- Improving the characterization of California’s and China’s snowpack for water and energy resource management (Sponsored by the California Energy Commission as part of the DOE U.S./China Clean Energy Research Center for Water-Energy Technologies (CERC-WET) Program)
- Understanding and forecasting changes in High Mountain Asia snow hydrology via a novel Bayesian reanalysis and modeling approach (Sponsored by NASA High Mountain Asia Program)
- Transformative insights into the high-elevation climatology and dynamics of Andean hydrology using a new snow reanalysis dataset (Sponsored by NSF Hydrologic Sciences Program)
- Developing a global assimilation and modeling framework to produce SWOT data products (Sponsored by NASA SWOT Science Team Program)