Back to basics: Hydrology — distilled

• Published in: Weather 1997-11, Vol.52 (11), p.330-337
• Main Author: Rodda, John C.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0043-1656; 1477-8696
• DOI: 10.1002/j.1477-8696.1997.tb06249.x

Hydrology, the science of what happens to the rain', traditionally has provided the basis for the development and management of water resources, but currently it has a growing environmental dimension to handle these emerging problems. That hydrology starts where meteorology stops may be too simplistic a view of these sister sciences. However, a forecast of intense rain frequently has to be followed by a flood forecast, while the hydrologist's 'loss' due to the evaporation from a basin, such as the Mississippi, can be the meteorologist's input to a global circulation model (GCM). In the past, most of the activity in hydrology has been focused on the river basin, from finger-tip rills at one extreme to the 5 870 000 km super(2) of the Amazon at the other. But now, under the influence of global change, from the atmospheric transport and deposition of pollutants, to the impact of river inputs on the coastal zone, hydrology is becoming a global science.