‘Rivers in the Sky’: How Atmospheric Rivers Control Nearly All of Earth’s Precipitation – Popular Mechanics

On Jan. 28, 2020, the GOES West satellite traced the path of an atmospheric river flowing across the northern Pacific Ocean (courtesy of NOAA, Public Domain, via Flickr).

“Atmospheric rivers are literally rivers in the sky, the rivers of water vapor that transport massive amounts of water in the atmosphere,” Marty Ralph, a hydrometeorologist, tells Popular Mechanics. Ralph is the founding director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, where he has pioneered research on how atmospheric rivers influence the West Coast…