Dear AGU,

Greetings from the lysimeters of Forchungszentrum Jülich, Germany!

Here is Jana Schneider (graduate student) who is at the bottom of a newly installed lysimeter and Zhen Li (graduate student) who is installing sensors in one of the lysimeters. The soil filled lysimeters are used to measure and quantify all of the components of the water balance (e.g. infiltration, evapotranspiration). Our project aims to study how surface roughness and soil heterogeneity influence soil-atmosphere interactions, and how to incorporate these effects to large scale hydrological models by effective parameters. Our scientific team includes researchers with diverse scientific backgrounds and perspectives (modelers and experimentalists at the bench scale and field scale). The lysimeter construction happened to be during a “heatwave” in Germany in which the temperature was between 30 ℃ to 40℃. It was so hot in the lysimeters that I need to wear a lab coat on my head to attempt to stay cool. My colleagues got a kick out of it, but who knows, it might be a new fashion statement if the temperature keeps rising!

It is just fantastic that we are conducting climate-related research under these extreme record-breaking weather conditions!

Jana Schneider and Jan Vanderborght , Forchungszentrum Jülich, Germany

Zhen Li, Colorado School of Mines, University of Texas at Arlington, USA

Kathleen Smits, University of Texas at Arlington, USA