1 introduction to hydrology

An Introduction to Hydrology
Susan Derges - Water hydrological Cycle

Riccardo Rigon

Monday, March 11, 13

It begins with a storm …

They were rolls, waves that finished in a puff: known noises,
village things. Everything that we have here is animated, lively,
maybe because the distances are short and fixed as in a theatre.
The downpours were onto the courtyards here around, the
thunder up here above the roofs; I could recognize by ear, a
little further up, the place of the usual God that made storms
when we were children, He too a village character. Here all is
as if intensified, a matter of scale probably, of inner
relationships. The shape of the noises and of these thoughts
(which were, after all, the same thing) seemed to me for a
moment truer than true, but it cannot be recreated with words.

Luigi Meneghello - Incipit of “Libera Nos A Malo”

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Introduction to Hydrology

Objectives

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Objectives

•To explain what hydrology is and what it deals with:

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Objectives


•The elements of the water cycle

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Objectives



•The spatial and temporal scales involved

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Objectives




•The mass and energy balance at a global scale

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Objectives




•The mass and energy balance at a global scale

•The Budyko Curve

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The Water Cycle

The water on Earth flows from the atmosphere to the ground. And then
from the rivers to the sea, from where it returns to the atmosphere:

Hydrology is the science that studies these flows, which make up the water
cycle.

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The Water Cycle

The flows from the atmosphere to the surface of the Earth are called
precipitations. The water that reaches the ground can infiltrate and flow
within the soil or it can run off on the surface (these are referred to as
horizontal flows).

At the same time, there is evaporation from the soil and water surfaces, and
transpiration from plants and animals (in a word, evapotranspiration).
Infiltration and evaporation constitute the vertical flows.

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From where the Earth water arrives ?

During the first seconds after the Big Bang, hydrogen and Helium were
created. Accordingly to the actual cosmogenetic theories oxygen was
formed a little later. However, it is the third element more diffuse in the
universe.
Ball, P., 1999

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From where the Earth water arrives ?

If you consider that Helium is very much not reactive could not not a real
surprise that an element built on Hydrogen and Oxygen is abundant on the
Earth.
Ball, P., 1999

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How much ?

Distribution of Water on Earth
Saline groundwater & lakes
Fresh

Oceans 3%
2%

95%

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K. Caylor

How much ?

Ice & Snow
Groundwater
Fresh
Surface Water

Oceans 3%
2%

30%

70%
95%

0.34%

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K. Caylor

How much ?

Ice & Snow
Groundwater
Fresh
Surface Water

Oceans 3%
2% Surface water
30%
is only 0.34%
of all fresh
70%
95% water

0.34%

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K. Caylor

How much ?

Ice & Snow Soil
Groundwater
Fresh
Surface Water
moisture

Oceans 3% Ice 14%
2%
&
Snow
30%
Lakes,
70%
95% Wetlands, & Rivers
86%

0.34%

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K. Caylor

How much ?

Ice & Snow Soil
Groundwater
Fresh
Surface Water
moisture

Oceans 3% Ice 14%
2%
&
Snow
30%
Lakes,
70%
95% Wetlands, & Rivers
86%

0.34%
Soil moisture is 0.001% of all water.
Provides for all agricultural food production and
sustains all terrestrial ecosystems 12

K. Caylor

How much ?

The Water Cycle
Collocation Area covered Volume % % of fresh
[106 km2 ] [106 km3 ] water
Oceans 361.300 1.338 96.5 -
Groundwater 134.8 23.4 1.7 -
Fresh grundwater 10.530 0.76 30.1
Soil humidity 82 0.0165 0.001 0.05
Perennial ice and snow 16.2275 24.0641 1.74 68.7
Antarctic 13.980 21.600 1.56 61.7
Greenland 1.8024 2.340 0.17 6.68
Arctic islands 0.2261 0.0835 0.006 0.24
Mountain areas 0.224 0.0406 0.003 0.12
Permafrost 21 0.3 0.022 0.86
Water in lakes 2.0587 0.1764 0.013 -
Fresh water in lakes 1.2364 0.091 0.007 0.26
Salt water in lakes 0.8223 0.0854 0.006 -
Lagoons and swamps 2.682.6 0.01147 0.0002 0.006
Rivers 148.8 0.00212 0.0002 0.0006
Water in living beings 510 0.0012 0.0.0001 0.0003
Water in the atmosphere 510 0.0129 0.001 0.04
Water total 510 1385.98561 100 -
Fresh water total 148.8 35.02921 2.53 100

Data from:Global Change in the Geosphere-Biosphere, NRC, 1986, Shiklomanov and
Skolov (1983).
You can see also:
Oki et al., 2001; Shiklomanov, I. A., 2000; Vorosmarty et al., 2000; Hanasaki et al., 2006
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The Water Cycle

sustains Life on Earth

shapes the surface of the Earth

regulates the climate

The engine of the Water Cycle is composed of: solar radiation, which causes
gradients in temperature, pressure, and density, and the phase changes of water in
the atmosphere and within the soil; the force of gravity; surface tensions; and
electrochemical forces.

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Hower ...

Looking to our neighbors

Venus Earth Mars

No one has very much oxygen and water

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However...

Looking to our neighbors

Venus Earth Mars

96.5% CO2 78 % N2 93.5% CO2
3.5% N2 31% O2 2.7% N2

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Does life influences the Hydrological Cycle ?

Is therefore the actual
composition of
atmpsphere due to the
presence of life ?

Figure 1 The effect of life on the Earth’s
atmosphere.

Lenton, T., 1998
a, Atmospheric compositions of Earth, Mars
and Venus
(excluding water vapour and noble gases).
b, Estimated fluxes of gases at the Earth’s
surface in teramoles
(1012 moles) per year,
with (pre-industrial) life and without life.

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Oxygen concentration Earth before present

Holland, 2006
Time before present (Gyears)

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CO2 atmospheric concentration before present

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Therefore

We can conjecture that, maybe, is also true the reverse (water maintains life)

•but the hydrological cycle, se we see it, could also be the product of the
presence of life on Earth

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The Water Cycle
Figure from Horton, 1931

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The good old hydrological cycle
Oki and Kanae, 2006

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RFWR

A relevant aspect

Is that just part of the whole water can be utilized by humans and
ecosystems. This part is usually named
•Renewable Freshwater resources (RFWR)

Is there enough RFWR ?

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RFWR

Oki and Kanae, 2006

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RFWR

Oki and Kanae, 2006

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RFWR

Oki and Kanae, 2006

La maggior parte della RFWR è costituita della portata dei fiumi

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RFWR

Oki and Kanae, 2006

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RFWR

Blue Water
Green Water
White Water

Blue Water: surface water and groundwater

Green Water: soil water, available for plants

White Water: just atmospheric water

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RFWR
Aeschbach-Hertig and Gleeson, 2012

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Compartment Volume % Source Incoming Emission Outgoing
Flow Flow
Oceans 1338 96.51 P 4581 E 5051
3242 3612
3853 4243
R 471
372
403
Atmosphere 0.013 0.001 ET 5771 P 5771
from the landmasses 721
622 992
713 1113
from the oceans 5051
3612 3242
4243 3853
Landmasses 48 3.46 P 1191 ET 721
992 622
1113 712
R 471
372
403

Global water flows (1-Shiklomanov and Sokolov,1983 ; 2- Peixoto e Kettani, 1973 3- Baumgartner e Reichel, 1975.
The volumes are in millions of km cubed and the flows are in millions of km cubed per year. P = Precipitations; R =
Surface runoff; E =evaporation ; ET = evapotranspiration
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Extreme Events

Looking to the mean hydrological budgets
is not just the only wat

Extreme events matter
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Spatial and Temporal Scales
Gentine, 2012

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Spatial and Temporal Scales

Cycles ?
Peixoto-Oort, 1992; Mitchell, 1974

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Il mezzo è il messaggio
Burri-Untitled 1952

Riccardo Rigon


The medium is the message

The water cycle is not only defined by the presence of water and its flows, but
also by the media on which, or through which, these water flows take place:

•the atmosphere
•vegetation
•the ground surface
•soils
•aquifers

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The atnospheric boundary Layer

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Vegetation

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The terrain surface

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Soils

O horizon

O horizon
A horizon

real soil
A horizon
B horizon layer
real soil
layer
B horizon
C horizon

C horizon

unconsolidated rock

Bedrock BedRock

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Below the soils

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Aquifers

http://www.wec.ufl.edu/extension/gc/harmony/images/aquifer.gif
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Hydrological information
a classical view

La Scuola di Atene, Raffaello

Riccardo Rigon


The global hydrological cycle

Distribution of Mean Annual Precipitation

Da Dingman, 1994
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Precipitation Patterns

from Dingman, 1994
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Areas Seasonally Covered by Snow
from Dingman, 1994

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The Largest Rivers on Earth

from Dingman, 1994
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the thousand longest rivers on earth
From the work "the thousand rivers” (i mille fiumi) by Arrigo Boetti and Anna-marie Sauzeau-Boetti

classification by order of magnitude is the most common method for classifying information relative to a certain category, in the case of rivers, size can be
understood to the power of one, two, or three, that is, it can be expressed in km, km2, or m3 (length, catchment area, or discharge), the length criterion is the most
arbitrary and naive but still the most widespread, and yet it is impossible to measure the length of a river for the thousand and more perplexities that its fluid nature
brings up (because of its meanders and its passage through lakes, because of its ramifications around islands or its movements in the delta areas, because of
man’s intervention along its course, because of the elusive boundaries between fresh water and salt water...) many rivers have never been measured because
their banks and waters are inaccessible, even the water spirits sympathise at times with the flora and the fauna in order to keep men away, as a consequence
some rivers flow without name, unnamed because of their untouched nature, or unnamable because of human aversion (some months ago a pilot flying low over
the brazilian forest discovered a “new” tributary of the amazon river). other rivers cannot be measured, instead, because they have a name, a casual name given
to them by men (a single name along its entire course when the river, navigable, becomes means of human communication; different names when the river,
formidable, visits isolated human groups); now the entity of a river can be established either with reference to its name (trail of the human adventure), or with
reference to its hydrographic integrity (the adventure of the water from the remotest source point to the sea, independently of the names assigned to the various
stretches), the problem is that the two adventures rarely coincide, usually the adventure of the explorer is against the current, starting from the sea; the adventure
of the water, on the other hand, finishes there, the explorer going upstream must play heads or tails at every fork, because upstream of every confluence
everything rarefies: the water, sometimes the air, but always one’s certainty, while the river that descends towards the sea gradually condenses its waters and the
certainty of its inevitable path, who can say whether it is better to follow man or the water? the water, say the modern geographers, objective and humble, and so
the begin to recompose the identity of the rivers, an example: the mississippi of new orleans is not the extension of the mississippi that rises from lake itasca in
minnesota, as they teach at school, but of a stream that rises in western montana with the name jefferson red rock and then becomes the mississippi-missouri in st
louis, the number of kilometres upstream is greater on the missouri side, but in fact this “scientific” method is applied only to the large and prestigious rivers, those
likely to compete for records of length, the methodological rethinking is not wasted on minor rivers (less than 800km) which continue to be called, and measured,
only according to their given name, even if, where there are two source course (with two other given names), the longer of the two could be rightly included in the
main course, the current classification reflects this double standard, this follows the laws of water and the laws of men, because that is how the relevant
information is given, in short, it reflects the biased game of information rather than the fluid life of water, this classification was began in 1970 and ended in 1973,
some data were transcribed from famous publications, numerous data were elaborated from material supplied non-european geographic institution, governments,
universities, private research centres, and individual accademics from all over the world, this convergence of documentation constitutes the the substance and the
meaning of the work, the innumerable asterisks contained in these thousand record cards pose innumerable doubts and contrast with the rigid classification
method, the partialness of the existing information, the linguistic problems associated with their identity, and the irremediably elusive nature of water all mean that
this classification, like all those that proceeded it or that will follow, will always be provisional and illusionary

Anne-marie Sauzeau-Boetti

(TN the text is published without capital letters) 47

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Modern Hydrological Information
Luigi Ghirri, Infinito, 1974

Riccardo Rigon


http://www-cger.nies.go.jp/grid-e/gridtxt/prec_geo.html

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http://geography.uoregon.edu/envchange/clim_animations/#Global%20Water
%20Balance

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%20Balance

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%20Balance

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%20Balance

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Is it possible to close the terrestrial water
budget with satellite measures ?

T O P E X /
TRMM/CMORPH CERES/MODIS/
P O SE ID O N/ GRACE
AIRS Land
PERSIAN, GPM J A S O N ,
Flux
SWOT

Next future (2016)

Now it is not. However in the future .....

Wood et al., Closing the Terrestrial water Budget from satellite Remote sensing, GRL, 2009
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Marco Mancini


Global Digital Terrain Data
The elevation data resulting from the SRTM are probably the best known global
dataset Rabus et al. 2003.
http://www,analist.net

The area covered by the mission goes from 60° North to 58° South. The data was
obtained with an X-band radar (NASA and MIL, that covers 100% of the area) and by
a C-band radar (DLR and ASI) that covers 40%.
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Global Digital Terrain Data

The DLR and ASI data, nonpublic, would be available with a resolution of about
30m (1 arcsec). A model of the Earth’s surface, ETOPO1 Global Relief Model (which
includes bathymetry data) is available with a resolution of 1km and can be

downloaded from NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center (Amante and Eakins,
2008). Global DEM’s, at various resolutions, from 1km to 2.5, 5, and 10 arcminutes,
are available at the worldclim website. The SRTM DEM at 90m resolution can be
obtained from CGIAR - Consortium for Spatial Information. In June 2009 a DEM
based on the ASTER satellite (GDEM) survey with a 30m resolution was produced.
The GDEM was obtained by stereoscopic correlation of 1.3 million optical ASTER
images, that cover about 98% of the Earth’s surface. The images can be downloaded
from NASA's EOS data archive or from Japan's Ground Data System.

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Global Water Resources
The most thorough global inventory of water resources is the Global Lakes and
Wetlands Database (GLWD), which includes lakes, catchment areas, rivers and various
wetlands. The map is in raster format with pixels at 30-arcsec resolution (Lehner and
Doll, 2004). Vector images of the Earth’s catchments and similar vector data can be
obtained from RS GIS Unit of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI).

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Climatic Maps
WorldClim.org provides global maps of some 18 bioclimatic parameters derived (with
thin plate smoothing splines) using >15,000 weather stations (Hijmans et al., 2005).
The climatic parameters include: mean, minimum and maximum temperatures,
monthly precipitation and bioclimatic variables. All at ground resolution of 1 km.

Mean annual temperature

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Climatic Maps

Annual precipitations

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Climatic Maps

Coefficient of variation of rainfall

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Geological Maps

Soil maps play an elemental role in Hydrology and Agrometeorology. The
only truly global soil map is that available from USGS Global Soil Regions
with a 60-arcsec resolution (FAO-UNESCO, 2005). Geological maps have now
been integrated by the OneGeology project. The USDA Soil Survey Division
also distributes global maps of wetland areas (which include: upland,
lowland, organic, permafrost and salt affected wetlands). The ISRIC
maintains a global database of soil profiles comprising over 12,000 profiles
with analytic descriptions and the parameters for 50 soil types (Batjes,

2008).

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Geological Maps

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Precipitations all over the Earth in real-time

http://sharaku.eorc.jaxa.jp/GSMaP/index.htm
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Other data

Other data on the web

http://abouthydrology.blogspot.it/2012/11/repertorio-nazionale-dei-dati.html

http://abouthydrology.blogspot.it/2012/08/free-cartographic-italian-data-on-web.html

http://nil-pipraen.blogspot.it/2012/04/hydrological-modeling.html

http://www.bafg.de/GRDC/EN/Home/homepage__node.html

http://www.nwl.ac.uk/ih/devel/wmo/hhcdbs.html

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The Global Energy Balance

Jackson Pollock

Riccardo Rigon


The global energy budget

Initial solar radiation Reflected solar radiation Infrared radiation from Earth
SPACE

ATMOSPHERE
Reflected by
modified after Wallace and Hobbs, 1977

air

Net emission from
CO2, H20
Reflected by
clouds
Absorbed by CO2, O3,
dust

Absorbed by CO2, H20
Absorbed by clouds

Reflected by
Absorbed by Earth’s surface
vegetation <0.2 Heat transfer by Latent heat
Net emission of infrared
(photosintetic (conduction and) transferred
radiation
efficiency) convention by
convention

OCEAN-CONTINENTS

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SPACE

ATMOSPHERE
Reflected by

air

Net emission from
CO2, H20
Reflected by
clouds
dust

Absorbed by clouds

Reflected by
radiation
convention

OCEAN-CONTINENTS

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Reflected solar radiation
Of the net short-wave radiation
Infrared radiation from Earth
Initial solar radiation
SPACE

ATMOSPHERE
Reflected by

air

Net emission from
CO2, H20
Reflected by
clouds
dust

Absorbed by clouds

Reflected by
radiation
convention

OCEAN-CONTINENTS

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Reflected solar radiation
Of the net short-wave radiation
Infrared radiation from Earth
Initial solar radiation
SPACE

ATMOSPHERE
Reflected by

air

Net emission from
CO2, H20
Reflected by
clouds
dust

Absorbed by clouds

Reflected by
vegetation <0.2
on average (spatially heat
Heat transfer by Latent over the
(photosintetic
efficiency)
radiation entire (conduction and) the by
surface of transferred
convention
Earth and
temporally over an entire year)
convention

only 50 % makes it to the
OCEAN-CONTINENTS ground

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SPACE

ATMOSPHERE
Reflected by

air

Net emission from
CO2, H20
Reflected by
clouds
dust

Absorbed by clouds

Reflected by
radiation
convention
19 + 1 + 30 + 50 = 100
OCEAN-CONTINENTS

(16+3)
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SPACE

ATMOSPHERE 19 % is absorbed by the
Reflected by
atmosphere.

air

Net emission from
CO2, H20
Reflected by
clouds
dust

Absorbed by clouds

Reflected by
radiation
convention
19 + 1 + 30 + 50 = 100
OCEAN-CONTINENTS

(16+3)
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SPACE

Reflected by
atmosphere.

air

Net emission from
A small percentage (1%) is used
CO , H 0 2 2
Reflected by
clouds
by plants - small percentage
Absorbed by CO2, O3, but substantially important!
dust

Absorbed by clouds

Reflected by
radiation
convention
19 + 1 + 30 + 50 = 100
OCEAN-CONTINENTS

(16+3)
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SPACE

Reflected by
atmosphere.

air

Net emission from
A small percentage (1%) is used
CO , H 0 2 2
Reflected by
clouds
by plants - small percentage
Absorbed by CO2, O3, but substantially important!
dust

30% ofby CO , H 0 radiation is, on
Absorbed the 2 2

Absorbed by clouds
average, reflected back towards
Absorbed by
Reflected by
Earth’s surface
space (and makes up the albedo
Net emission of infrared Earth).
of the
radiation
convention
19 + 1 + 30 + 50 = 100
OCEAN-CONTINENTS

(16+3)
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SPACE

ATMOSPHERE
Reflected by

air

Net emission from
CO2, H20
Reflected by
clouds
dust

Absorbed by clouds

Reflected by
vegetation Heat transfer by Latent heat
radiation
convention

OCEAN-CONTINENTS

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SPACE

ATMOSPHERE
Reflected by

air

Net emission from
CO2, H20
Reflected by
clouds
dust

Absorbed by clouds
So the 50% that the ground Reflected by

receives is returned to spacesurface
Absorbed by
vegetation
Earth’s
(if Heat transfer by Latent heat
(photosintetic n e r g y
the e balance were (conduction and) transferred
radiation
stationary: in fact climate convention

change is all due to the
imbalance).
OCEAN-CONTINENTS

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To the 50% that reaches the
ground,Initial solar the 19% that was radiation
add radiation Reflected solar Infrared radiation from Earth
SPACE
absorbed by the atmosphere to
make up the total outgoing
infrared radiation (69%).
ATMOSPHERE
Reflected by

air

Net emission from
CO2, H20
Reflected by
clouds
dust

Absorbed by clouds

Absorbed by
vegetation
Earth’s
radiation

imbalance).
OCEAN-CONTINENTS

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To the 50% that reaches the
ground,Initial solar the 19% that was radiation
add radiation Reflected solar Infrared radiation from Earth
SPACE
absorbed by the atmosphere to
make up the total outgoing
infrared radiation (69%).
ATMOSPHERE
Reflected by

air

The 50% from the ground can
be divided into three parts: the Net emission from
CO2, H20
r a d i a t i v e e m i s s i o n Reflectedtby e
of h
clouds
surfacebyof , O , Earth (20%), the
Absorbed CO the
2 3
dust
evapotranspiration flux (23%),
and heat loss by convection
(7%).
Absorbed by clouds

Absorbed by
vegetation
Earth’s
radiation

imbalance).
OCEAN-CONTINENTS

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The global enrgy budget
http://www.agu.org/eos_elec/95206e.html

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Lin, B., P. W. Stackhouse Jr., P. Minnis, B. A. Wielicki, Y. Hu, W. Sun, T.-
F. Fan, and L. M. Hinkelman (2008), Assessment of global annual
atmospheric energy balance from satellite observations, J. Geophys.

R. Rigon
Res., 113, D16114, doi:10.1029/2008JD009869

The global enrgy budget

Mean Annual Balance of the Oceans

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