We're collecting almost all the aspects of water, including its temperature, flow, duration it's been in soil, where it came from in the atmosphere and how long it stayed.

I'm excited about this project because it ties in all the pieces of knowledge about water into one package. It's not that we don't know anything about water-we just have a lot of bits and pieces of information on it. We have no observations to tell us what's right or wrong, but hopefully this project will change that and have an impact globally.

Satellites only show you the clouds. We want to track the invisible water vapor and the water hidden in trees and the soil.

That just a forcing function though. To really understand the carbon cycle, you have to look at the circulation, biology and chemistry of the oceans where the carbon dioxide goes, the photosynthesis of plants as they breath carbon dioxide, the decomposition of plants, and many other forces.

It's one thing to say when it's going to rain, but how do we know when there's going to be a flood? We're still not good at predicting floods or droughts, but we hope that's just one out of many things our model can help us predict.

But what's different about this project is we are pulling together experts from different fields, such as isotope chemistry, electrical engineering, earth and planetary sciences and geology to look at the water cycle from beginning to end.