White water: Available water resources in the atmosphere [version 1]

Due to the rapid deterioration of global climate, the study of its impact on atmospheric water resource is becoming an urgent issue in many regions. Extensive research has been done in the field of atmospheric water resources, but a consensus is yet to be reached to make this concept widely adoptable. Based on the concept of azure water, this paper proposes a novel concept representing the precipitable atmospheric water resources, being named as the “white water”, where an assumption is made to quantify the white water with an evaluation approach. Taking Tarim Basin in Xinjiang and Sanjiangyuan Area in Qinghai as study areas, the white water is found to be able to explain the differences in precipitation of these two areas, in spite that they have the same level of total atmospheric water flux. Further analysis also shows that the feature variables derived from the white water can intuitively explain the differences in precipitation conversion potentials from different regions. The proposed research work provides a new and effective approach to establish the link between the white water and the atmospheric water resources.