Abstract:

The water cycle in the Earth’s climate system is constantly evolving and renewing. In recent years, under the dual influence of global warming and human activities, the hydrological cycle has undergone significant changes, which has aroused widespread concern in society and academia. The hydrological cycle is the core of hydrometeorology and climate system, which links between the climate subsystems. In recent years, scholars at home and abroad have made great achievements in understanding the characteristics of global and regional hydrological cycle changes by using various observation methods and sea-land-air coupling models. The deep understanding of the physical mechanism and driving factors of water cycle change improve the ability to predict its possible change in the future. In this paper, the changes in the hydrological cycle related to hydrometeorology in the past 20 years, causes of the changes in the global, regional and watershed hydrological cycle fluxes, and the prediction of future changes are comprehensively reviewed. Finally, some problems that should be paid attention to in future hydrological cycle change research are discussed. In particular, three questions worth further attention are emphasized. These questions are the changes of hydrological cycle elements with global warming at different spatio-temporal scales, the detection and attribution of the causes of hydrological cycle changes at different spatio-temporal scales, and the interaction and coupling model between terrestrial hydrological cycle and atmospheric water cycle.

Key words: Hydrometeorology, Hydrological cycle, Climate system model, Anthropogenic forcing, Prediction