Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2006DE76B

The Effect of Proposed Climatic Warming on the Hydrological Cycle

Institute: Delaware
Year Established: 2006 Start Date: 2006-06-01 End Date: 2007-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $1,750 Total Non-Federal Funds: $3,500

Principal Investigators: David Legates

Abstract: Climatic warming is widely assumed to lead to a more vigorous hydrological cycle and changes in the frequency and spatial distribution of severe droughts and/or floods. These changes in storm intensity and precipitation may also have the potential for devastating effects on human life. Further research is needed to examine the impact of spatial and temporal scales on storm intensity, changes in precipitation amount, and flood or drought magnitude. Also, the impact of human changes to the environment may often skew the results of precipitation studies, and thus further research must be done to fully understand the influence of urban heat islands, development of land/water ways, pollution, etc. on changes to the hydrologic cycle. The goal of this project is to further investigate the impact of human influences as well as climatic warming on changes observed in the hydrologic cycle, such as precipitation amount, droughts, floods, storm intensity, runoff, evaporation rates, and transpiration rates.