The atmospheric water cycle is a key component of the climate system, and links across many scientific disciplines. Processes and dynamics at different scales interact throughout the atmospheric life cycle of water vapour from evaporation to precipitation. This session sets the focus on processes, dynamics and characteristics at the evaporation sources, during moisture transport, and at the precipitation sinks as observed from in-situ and remote sensing, recorded by (paleo)climate archives, and as simulated for past, present and future climates.

Peter Knippertz will make an invited presentation to this session.

We invite studies

* focusing on extensive transient features of the atmospheric water cycle, such as Atmospheric Rivers, Cold-Air Outbreaks, warm conveyor belts, tropical moisture exports, precipitation extremes, and the monsoon systems.

* investigating the large-scale drivers of the water cycle features’ variability and change by looking at observations, reanalyses or global/regional climate simulations, in order to improve their predictability

* involving and connecting results from field campaigns (YOPP, MOZAIC, NAWDEX), reanalysis data, indicators of past hydroclimate from climate proxies such as ice cores and stalagmites, and model predictions of the future evolution of the atmospheric water cycle,

* applying methods such as stable isotopes as physical tracers in the water cycle, tagged water tracers, and Lagrangian moisture source diagnostics to identify source-sink relationships and to evaluate model simulations of the water cycle,

* describing the global and regional state of the atmospheric cycle with characteristics such as the recycling ratio, life time of water vapour, and moisture transport distance

We particularly encourage contributions to link across neighbouring disciplines, such as atmospheric science, climate, paleoclimate, cryosphere, and hydrology.

This session is a companion session to HS7.9/AS4.4: "Feedbacks, management, land-use and climate change"