GLOBAL SCALE HYDROLOGY - ADVANCES IN LAND SURFACE MODELING

Research into global scale hydrology is an expanding area that includes researchers from the meteorology, climatology, ecology and hydrology communities. This paper reviews research in this area carried out in the United States during the last IUGG quadrennial period of 1987 - 1990. The review covers the representation of land-surface hydrologic processes for general circulation models (GCMs), sensitivity analysis of these representations on global hydrologic fields like precipitation, regional studies of climate that have global hydrologic implications, recent field studies and experiments whose aims are the improved understanding of land surface - atmospheric interactions, and the use of remotely sensed data for the further understanding of the spatial variability of surface hydrologic processes that are important at regional and global climate scales.