WATEREverything

About the

Water cycle

Dont miss a step

And learn more

With our expert on

Wheather

By: Sara

Water cycle is the process in witch water moves though earth’s

oceans, atmosphere, and land, precipitation, transforming into rain and snow also into streams and rivers, and returning to the atmosphere by evaporation. The water cycle also describes the movements of water below and above the surface of the Earth. Water goes into solid liquid or gas during this process by converting into liquid, vapor and ice. Water moves from one place to another like from a river to ocean, by process of evaporation, condensation, precipitation, percolation and surface run off.

Evaporation is the process in which water changes from liquid to gas. Earths 70 percent is covered by ocean, this provides more evaporation. The same amount of water been evaporated is much the same amount of water delivered to earths precipitation. Most of the evaporated water from oceans falls back as precipitation. About 10 percent of the evaporated water from oceans, is transported over land and falls as precipitation. When it evaporates water molecules spend 10 days on the air. Without this cycle oceans would become almost empty.

Condensation is the transformation of water vapor into liquid drops creating clouds and fog. It is very important in the water cycle because is the one that makes the cloud formation. Condensation is the opposite of evaporation. Condensation is very noticeable. You can see it at the ground level as fog, glasses fogging up when you go from a cold place to a hot room.

Most precipitation happens as rain but sometimes it also happens as snow, fog, freezing rain, hail or sleet.

Rain: is when water is released from clouds.

Snow: is when ice crystals precipitate

Sleet: is when ice pellets precipitate

Hail: is when different sizes of pellets of ice precipitate

Runoff is the variety of ways in which water moves across the land to the oceans. When water is flowing across land it may get inside the ground becoming groundwater, evaporate into the air or store in a lake. Sometimes runoff can lead to flooding when there is too much precipitation.

Percolation is the movement of water by soil. Then it soaks and makes some layers.

Because water cycle uses the energy from the sun, the evaporation that is coming from the ocean reduces temperature by evaporative cooling. Because of this it leads us to a higher surface temperature and this warms the planet.

70% of the surface is covered by water and 30 % is land. 97% is salted water and 3% is fresh water. Lakes have 7% of water, rivers have 3%, glaciers have 66%.

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycleevaporation.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cycle

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercyclecondensation.html

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycleprecipitation.html

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/hyd/run.rxml

http://www.nwrfc.noaa.gov/info/water_cycle/hydrology.cgi