The seminal papers on water

What should make up the ‘canon’ of water cycle papers, if one is interested in restoring earth, water and climate?

Here's an initial attempt to make a list of papers that form the basis of a fundamental understanding of the hydrological cycle. I debated whether I should choose papers for this list that clarify the topic the most, or papers that pioneered research into on a topic. I ended up choosing the pioneering papers to put into the list.

There are also review papers here that help do a good job of clarifying and giving an overview. I put these into their own category. In addition I created a background and adjacent paper section.

Quite a number of these papers, I have discussed in this newsletter in the past. I put a link to those articles.

There are 19 papers in the list. These papers reflect my bias, so let me know what papers you might add to this list, which you might substitute out for another one.

It occurs to me, a Science of Water course could be created around such a ‘canon’, that gets people up to speed on the scientific state of knowledge around water. (Let me know if such a course is of interest.)

There are eight papers here about the small water cycle/precipitation-recycling, the process where water rains onto the land, and then evapotranspires to create more rain. Without the small water cycle we would have a lot less rain. The largest portion of this list focuses on this topic, as I believe this is the key part of the water cycle to restore. I chose eight papers out of the hundreds of papers on this topic. The small water cycle can be restored by growing the forests, regenerating the soil, depaving concrete and ashphalt, and using earthworks. These processes help absorb more rain into the land, which leads to more evapotranspiration which leads to rain restoration. That rain then lessens droughts, fires, and water scarcity.

There are three papers here about evaporative cooling, and how trees and water can cool the earth. There are two papers about teleconnections. They examine how deforestation in one part of the world can affect rainfall in another part of the world. There are two papers about groundwater, how trees can use it to hydrate the environment, and also about how groundwater creates rain. When we deplete groundwater, we may lessen rain, and so increase drought, fires, and water scarcity.

The global water budget is covered in a paper. There’s a paper in the list about how water impacts fire, and then another paper related to this in the background paper section. And then one paper each about the soil carbon sponge, transpiration, and self-organization.

There is one on the global decrease in freshwater. The decrease is for a number of reasons : one, that the rains come in bigger bursts (droughts are also longer) which means its harder to absorb the rain, two, degradation of the landscape means its harder to absorb or hold the rains in the land and wetlands, three, humans have leveed the rivers so they do not overflow into floodplains, straightened out rivers, drained wetlands, and gotten ridden of beavers and natural infrastructure that helps turn rivers into wetlands. The drying of the continents then means the landscape is more flammable, and holds less water for human and agricultural usage. Less freshwater also means less precipitation recycling.

In the review section you will find papers on deforestation increasing floods, nature based solutions, climate change effects on water, and global water resource issues. You can click on link to read the paper. (Also in general you can use google scholar to get the paper info, and type the doi number into sci-hub.ru to read papers)

THE ‘CANON’

Precipitation recycling aka small water cycle

1."Recycling of water in the Amazon basin: an isotopic story" Salati 1979

Salati was the first science to provide observational evidence of significant precipitation recycling. He showed this using isotope measurements in the Amazon.

2." Planet Versus a Desert World: Estimating the Maximum Effect of Vegetation on the Land Surface Climate.” Kleidon, A., Fraedrich, K. & Heimann, M. 2000

An all desert world is compared with an all vegetated world in a computer model. The all vegetated world has twice as much rain, three times as much evapotranspiration, and is 8 degrees cooler at the surface.

Discussion of this paper https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/what-would-happen-to-the-rain-if

3.“Extreme hydrometeorological events and climate change predictions in Europe” Millan Millan [2013].

Millan’s work has semi-legendary status in the eco-crowd. Millan Millan was a Spanish meteorologist, and head of a 90 person center on climate and environment. He was asked by European commision to look into why Spain was losing its rain. He studied Valencia, a region of Spain. He found that when they drained the marshes and deforested the land, it lessened the evapotranspiration, and heated up the atmosphere so less of the water vapor turned into rain. As a result rain lessened. He wrote these results up in this paper. He managed to convince the European Commission to set aside 100 million dollars to restore Spanish lands, so they could bring back the rain that was so vital for the agriculture there. However the Spanish government was afraid of restoring so much land, so turned down the money.

Discussion of this paper https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/restoring-iberian-rain

4."Origin and fate of atmospheric moisture over continents" Van der Ent and Savenije 2010.

This paper mapped out where on continents there is more water evaporating, and where on continents that water then turns into rain. So we can see for instance how evaporation in the western US impacts rain in the US Midwest. The maps in this paper (or a nice graphic design version of them) really should take on iconic status, and be on living room walls of people all over the world.

Discussion about paper https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/map-of-the-small-water-cycle.

5."How do atmosphere and land surface influence seasonal changes of convection in the tropical Amazon?."Fu, Rong, Bin Zhu, and Robert E. Dickinson. (1999).

This paper looked at how the significant transpiration from Amazonian forests can trigger the onset of the wet season, because these cause large thunderstorms which altering large scale atmospheric circulation that bring in more moisture from the ocean. Rong Fu is a UCLA atmospheric scientist. Her body of work, which also looks at the Congo rainforest and rain in the USA, should be much more well known.

Discussion of paper https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/what-causes-the-rainy-season-to-start

6. “Biotic pump of atmospheric moisture as driver of the hydrological cycle on land.” A. M. Makarieva, V. G. Gorshkov. 2006

This is a famous paper in eco circles, and a controversial one in atmospheric science circles. It posits that when condensation happens in clouds this creates a vacuum that sucks up air. That then creates large scale atmospheric circulation that brings in ocean moisture. It has a similar effect to the one Rong Fu posited in paper above.

Certain atmospheric scientists have argued that the vacuum is effect is small compared to latent heat release during condensation which can then cause upward convection. Makarieva argues that in large scale atmospheric circulation one needs downward movement too, and that the latent heat release leads to slower downward movement, therefore the latent heat does not contribute as much to the circulation as the vacuum effect.

Discussion of paper https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/biotic-pump-anastasia-makarieva-interview

8. “Climate and the ocean circulation: I. The atmospheric circulation and the hydrology of the earth's surface.” Manabe, Syukuro, 1969

In the 1960s scientists were learning how to program computers to run climate simulations. At same time Manabe and Wetherald were developing their carbon greenhouse model that birthed the global warming movement that won Manabe the Nobel prize (Wetherald had passed away by the time of the award), Manabe was also working on a hydrological model. He studied soils and their ability to absorb water. And he implemented a simple scheme in the model to absorb the rains. After absorption the water could then evaporate and turn into rain again. Out of his mdel came the rain bands around the earth. It was the first computer model out of which small water cycle behavior could emerge. Later papers of his examined this behavior more. Imagine if Manabe’s water cycle work became as famous as his carbon greenhouse work.

Groundwater

9. "Hydraulic lift: substantial nocturnal water transport between soil layers by Artemisia tridentata roots." Richards, James H., and Martyn M. Caldwell. 1987

These researchers discovered that trees bring up groundwater and use it to hydrate the soil around them. Later researchers would discover that a significant amount was brought up during dry seasons, especially in arid and semi-arid areas.

Discussion of paper https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/the-secret-life-of-groundwater

Paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00379405

10. "Incorporating water table dynamics in climate modeling: 3. Simulated groundwater influence on coupled land-atmosphere variability" Richard O. Anyah, Christopher P. Weaver, Gonzalo Miguez-Macho, Ying Fan, Alan Robock 2008

Trees can bring up groundwater to transpire. That transpiration can then create rain. Computer simulations show that adding groundwater to their climate models had a significant impact on the rain. This has a lot of important consequences. Depleting groundwater may lessen rain.

For more on this topic

Bioaerosols

8. Schnell, R. C., and Gabor Vali. "Biogenic ice nuclei: Part I. Terrestrial and marine sources." Schnell, R. C., and Gabor Vali.(1976)

Schnell and Gabor were the first to propose that bacteria could nucleate water to form rain. Bioaerosols and bioprecipitation has since turned into a burgeoning field. Research shows that bacteria, fungi, and tree emitted terpenes form a significant percentage of ice nucleation aerosols that create rain. See bioaerosol review paper in Review section below. (Aerosol mean small particle floating in the air, often used to nucleate rain). We can probably restore rain by increasing Pseduomonas Syringae bacteria, fungi spores and forest-based terpene production.

Discussion of paper https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/bacteria-make-rain-bioprecipitation .

Global cooling, trees, and evaporative cooling

9."Reduced terrestrial evaporation increases atmospheric water vapor by generating cloud feedbacks." by M M Laguë, G R Quetin and W R Boos 2023

This paper compares a world of all desert to one of all swamps. The swamp world is cooler because of evaporative cooling, because it has more clouds, and because the water vapor greenhouse gas spends 50% less time in the atmosphere.

10."Cloud cooling effects of afforestation and reforestation at midlatitudes." Cerasoli, Sara, Jun Yin, and Amilcare Porporato. 2021

They found that planting more forests at mid-latitudes leads to a cooler earth, because clouds form more often over forests, leading to more sunlight being reflected back out to space.

11.“Influence of land-surface evapotranspiration on the Earth's climate” Shukla J and Mintz Y 1982

They found evapotranspiration has a significant effect on global temperatures and rain.

Transpiration

12. “Terrestrial water fluxes dominated by transpiration.” Jasechko, S., Sharp, Z., Gibson, J. et al. (2013).

Fire and water

13. “The influence of regional surface soil moisture anomalies on forest fires in Siberia observed from satellites.” Bartsch A, Balzter H, George C (2009)

This was the first of many papers that would track how fires were less likely where there was more soil moisture.

See "Does increased forest protection correspond to higher fire severity in frequent‐fire forests of the western United States?" paper in background paper section below, which could mean that unmanged forests hold more moisture which leads to less fires.

Unfortunately in general there is very little research being done on other aspects of how restoring the water cycle affects fire. Draining our continents is drying the land which makes it more flammable. This area of fire and water research is where we need more academics to focus on.

Self-organization via dissipative structures

14. "Water: the bloodstream of the biosphere" Wilhelm Ripl 2003

How the water cycle self-organizes itself via energy dissipation, using Prigogine’s theory of disspative structures. The state of the land affects this self-organizational ability.

Teleconnections - deforestation in one part of world, affects other parts of world

15.Avissar, Roni, and David Werth. "Global hydroclimatological teleconnections resulting from tropical deforestation." Journal of Hydrometeorology 6, no. 2 (2005): 134-145.

Cutting down the forests in Amazon will have an impact on other places in the world e.g. it will lead to less rain in the US midwest in spring and summer. Deforestation of Southeast Asia affects rainfall in China and the Balkans.

16."The Influence of Maritime Continent Deforestation on El Niño-Southern Oscillation: Insights from Idealized Modeling Experiments." Yu, Jin-Yi, T.Lee, Y.Lin, and Min-hui Lo.(2023)

Deforestation in Indonesia can affect El-Nino. El-Nino is a multi-year phenomena that affects many geographical areas.

Soil carbon sponge

17.Russell, M.B., A. Klute, and W.C. Jacob. 1952. “Further studies of long-time organic matter additions on the physical properties of Sassafras silt loam.” Soil Science Society of America Proceedings 16:156-9.

Manure increases the carbon content of the soil. When manure is added to soil, the soil is able to absorb more moisture. The amount it holds varys with depth. Studies since then, have mapped this out more precisely for many types of soils.

Global Freshwater

18.An Abrupt Decline in Global Terrestrial Water Storage and Its Relationship with Sea Level Change Rodell, M., Barnoud, A., Robertson, F.R. et al. 2024

Satellite imaging shows that freshwater amounts are decreasing, our continents are drying up.

Global Water Budget

19. "Estimates of the global water budget and its annual cycle using observational and model data." by Trenberth, Kevin E., Lesley Smith, Taotao Qian, Aiguo Dai, and John Fasullo. (2007)

They found that global precipitation of 113,000 cubic km, is made up of 73,000 cubic km of evapotranspiration, and 40,000 cubic km of ocean moisture. So evapotranspiration makes up 65% of rain, and ocean moisture makes up 35% of rain.

Review articles

Land use impact on rain

"Reviewing the impact of land use and land‐use change on moisture recycling and precipitation patterns." te Wierik, Sofie A., Erik LH Cammeraat, Joyeeta Gupta, and Yael A. Artzy‐Randrup. (2021)

Deforestation increases floods

"Global evidence that deforestation amplifies flood risk and severity in the developing world." Bradshaw, Corey JA, Navjot S. Sodhi, KELVIN S‐H. PEH, and Barry W. Brook. 2007

Discussion here

Trees impact on water and climate

"Trees, forests and water: Cool insights for a hot world." Ellison, David, Cindy E. Morris, Bruno Locatelli, Douglas Sheil, Jane Cohen, Daniel Murdiyarso, Victoria Gutierrez et al.2017

Nature-based solutions

Debele, Sisay E., Prashant Kumar, Jeetendra Sahani, Belen Marti-Cardona, Slobodan B. Mickovski, Laura S. Leo, Federico Porcù et al. "Nature-based solutions for hydro-meteorological hazards: Revised concepts, classification schemes and databases." Environmental Research 179 (2019): 108799

Norman, Laura M., Rattan Lal, Ellen Wohl, Emily Fairfax, Allen C. Gellis, and Michael M. Pollock. "Natural infrastructure in dryland streams (NIDS) can establish regenerative wetland sinks that reverse desertification and strengthen climate resilience." Science of the Total Environment 849 (2022): 157738.

Water cycle and rain changes

Advances in understanding large‐scale responses of the water cycle to climate change RP Allan, M Barlow, MP Byrne, A Cherchi, H Douville, HJ Fowler, TY Gan, et al Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1472 (1), 49-75

"Global precipitation: Means, variations and trends during the satellite era (1979–2014)." Adler, Robert F., Guojun Gu, Matthew Sapiano, Jian-Jian Wang, and George J. Huffman. (2017)

Water Resources & Availability

"Measuring global water security towards sustainable development goals." Gain, Animesh K., Carlo Giupponi, and Yoshihide Wada.(2016)

Bioaerosols

"Bioaerosols in the Earth system: Climate, health, and ecosystem interactions."Fröhlich-Nowoisky, Janine, Christopher J. Kampf, Bettina Weber, J. Alex Huffman, Christopher Pöhlker, Meinrat O. Andreae, Naama Lang-Yona et al. 2016

Background and adjacent papers

“Oceanic phytoplankton, atmospheric sulphur, cloud albedo and climate.”Charlson, R., Lovelock, J., Andreae, M. et al. (1987).

This was part of Lovelock’s Gaia theory. Lovelock proposed that when the earth heated up, more plankton would grow. The plankton would emit a substance that created DMS, which floated upwards to help nucleate water vapor into clouds. These clouds cooled then earth. This process is a feedback loop that adjusted earths temperatures. This theory may not turned out to be correct, but it set in motion the study of other aerosol feedback loops that help regulate the earths temperature.

"Does increased forest protection correspond to higher fire severity in frequent‐fire forests of the western United States?"Bradley, Curtis M., Chad T. Hanson, and Dominick A. DellaSala. Ecosphere 7, no. 10 (2016): e01492

This paper showed that unmanaged forests in western US had less fires. This suggests that when there is richer soil, more logs and more undergrowth in these forests holding more moisture, then there is less fires.

"On the role of atmospheric teleconnections in climate." Tsonis, Anastasios A., Kyle L. Swanson, and Geli Wang. (2008)

This paper showed that teleconnections can help stabilize climate….. When this result is combined with other research work that shows vegetation affects teleconnections, this leads us to consider if vegetation is helping stabilize the climate through teleconnections.

"Isotope variation in meteoric waters" Harmon Craig

This paper helped set the stage for how we use isotopes to track the movement of water around the earth. Discussion here

"Robust responses of the hydrological cycle to global warming." Held, Isaac M., and Brian J. Soden. 2006

This paper was voted co-second place for most influential climate papers of all time. It advanced the famous dictum that “the wet get wetter, and the dry get drier” with global warming i.e. certain areas of the world get more rain - the tropics and mid-latitudes with a lot of rainfall, such as Southeast Asia and the Amazon, are likely to see increased rainfall, while other areas will get drier - subtropical areas, and he southwestern United States, the Mediterranean, and parts of northern Africa are becoming more arid as a result of intensified evaporation and reduced rainfall.

However, others found this may only be partially correct.

"The response of precipitation minus evapotranspiration to climate warming: Why the “wet-get-wetter, dry-get-drier” scaling does not hold over land." Byrne, Michael P., and Paul A. O’Gorman. 2015

This paper and others shows that the ‘wet gets wetter, dry get dryer’ is not fully correct over land because of a variety of factors. This papers and others of similar ilk open the doorway to how precipitation recycling and land use can affect rainfall patterns, and affect the ‘wet gets wetter, dry gets dryer’ framework.

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Here’s a larger collection of water papers I have put together

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