Global water cycle and remote sensing big data: overview, challenge, and opportunities

• Published in: Big earth data Vol. 2; no. 3; pp. 282 - 297
• Main Authors: Cui, Yaokui, Chen, Xi, Gao, Jinyu, Yan, Binyan, Tang, Guoqiang, Hong, Yang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis 03.07.2018; Taylor & Francis Group
• Subjects: big data; overview; Remote sensing; water cycle
• ISSN: 2096-4471; 2574-5417
• DOI: 10.1080/20964471.2018.1548052

The Earth's water cycle involves energy exchange and mass movement in the hydrosphere and thus sustains the dynamic balance of global hydrologic cycle. All water cycle variables on the Earth are closely interconnected with each other through the process of energy and water circulation. Observing, understanding and predicting the storage, movement, and quality of water remains a grand challenge for contemporary water science and technology, especially for researches across different spatio-temporal scales. The remote sensing observing platform has a unique advantage in acquiring complex water information and has already greatly improved observing, understanding, and predicting ability of the water cycle. Methods of obtaining comprehensive water cycle data are also expanded by new remote sensing techniques, and the vast amount of data has become increasingly available and thus accelerated a new Era: the Remote Sensing Big Data Study of Global Water Cycle. The element inversion, time and space reconstruction, and scale conversion are three key scientific issues for remote sensing water cycle in such Era. Moreover, it also presents a huge opportunity of capitalizing the combinations of Remote Sensing and Big Data to advance and improve the global hydrology and water security research and development, and uncork the new bottlenecks.