Hydrological Cycle

Earth’s water is always in movement, and the natural water cycle, also known as the hydrologic cycle, describes the continuous movement of water on, above, and below the surface of the Earth

• Water is always changing states between liquid, vapor, and ice and water cycle has no starting point.
• Starting from oceans, the sun which drives the water cycle, heats the water in oceans causing it to evaporate as vapors. Ice and snow can sublimate directly into water vapor.
• Rising air currents take the vapor up into the atmosphere, along with water from evapotranspiration, which is water transpired from plants and evaporated from the soil.
• The vapor rises into the air where cooler temperatures cause it to condense into clouds.
• Air currents move clouds around the globe; cloud particles collide, grow, and fall out of the sky as precipitation.
• Some precipitation falls as snow and can accumulate as ice caps and glaciers, which can store frozen water for thousands of years. Snowpack in warmer climates often thaw and melt when spring arrives, and the melted water flows overland as snowmelt.
  
• Most precipitation falls back into the oceans or onto land, where, due to gravity, the precipitation flows over the ground as surface runoff.
• Runoff, and groundwater seepage, accumulate and are stored as freshwater in lakes.
• Some water infiltrates deep into the ground and replenishes aquifers (saturated subsurface rock), which store huge amounts of freshwater for long periods of time.
• Some infiltration stays close to the land surface and can seep back into surface water bodies (and the ocean) as groundwater discharge, and some groundwater finds openings in the land surface and emerges as freshwater spring.
• Climate change intensifies this cycle because as air temperatures increase, more water evaporates into the air. Warmer air can hold more water vapor, which can lead to more intense rainstorms, causing major problems like extreme flooding in coastal communities around the world.
• At the same time that some areas are experiencing stronger storms, others are experiencing more dry air and even drought. As temperatures rise, evaporation increases and soils dry out. Then when rain does come, much of the water runs off the hard ground into rivers and streams, and the soil remains dry.

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