NASA Energy and Water cycle Study

The availability and quantity of water is vital to life on earth and helps to tie together the Earth's lands, oceans and atmosphere into an integrated physical system. Our economic, political and social systems are being greatly affected by alterations in the global water cycle, particularly regional precipitation shifts and extreme hydrologic events, such as floods and droughts.

The water and energy cycle is driven by a multiplicity of complex processes and interactions at all time and space scales, many of which are inadequately understood and poorly represented in model predictions. In addition, many of the components of the global water cycle prediction system are available, but not integrated; yet improved water and energy cycle process understanding and model prediction require inter-disciplinary integration of many traditional disciplines, including atmospheric, terrestrial and ocean scientists, observationalists, modelers and stakeholders, and weather, climate and geologic researchers.

NASA is capable of and uniquely positioned to investigate the global climatic processes that govern precipitation and the replenishment of water resources. In 2003 NASA established the NASA Energy and Water cycle Study (NEWS), whose long-term grand challenge is to document and enable improved, observationally based, predictions of water and energy cycle consequences of Earth system variability and change. However, recognizing that the broad objectives of energy and water cycling related climate research extend well beyond the purview of any single agency's respective roles and missions. Therefore, to achieve the ultimate goal of credible global change predictions and applications across all significant scales, NASA continues to seek collaborations with other Federal and international agencies, the scientific community-at-large and private industry.