Learning how all of this plays out on the vast revolving stage of the world's hydrologic cycle is the task that scientists at Purdue University have set for themselves with the help of a five-year IBM grant. This figure shows the observed monthly mean vertically-integrated moisture flux anomaly over North America for July 1993. Moisture flux refers to the transport of water vapor by winds in the atmosphere plus additions from evaporations and removal by rain and snow. Vertically-integrated means the total atmospheric transport, rather than at some particular level. Flux anomaly means that these are deviations for July 1993 from the long-term July mean moisture flux.
Units are in meters squared per second.
Note the increased flux northward from the Gulf of Mexico. This SP System connects powerful IBM processors in parallel, enabling scientists for the first time to link up hydrologic model components of widely varying time and geographic scales into a single modeling suite or system. The range of climate models being studied at Purdue is unprecedented. By coupling all these models, Purdue scientists are implementing a comprehensive modeling and visualization system that makes it possible to gauge the effects of regional and global climate change on the availability and quality of the world's surface and groundwater supplies. And since those climate changes are affected by the pace and nature of such human undertakings as industrialization, urban development and farming, the prospects for taking corrective action where necessary become much more feasible and realistic.