example, the southwestern United States (in all seriousness) has
1. Lakes in North America (Figure 1), and another 20% is contained
the population was 3% of its current size. creates climate, and water is the single most important factor
These limitations of the past left a void in observations of precipitation or evaporation over the ocean that made quantifying the water cycle over the ocean difficult. As it moves through this cycle, it changes forms. In what is a particularly striking case, in the Amazon the drainage basin is so large that it makes its own climate, and evaporation in one part of the basin returns as rainfall in another part. Figure 2 is a traditional depiction of the global water cycle as viewed by hydrologists. This is dictated by the physics of water vapor in the air. moment to calculate the atmospheric water residence time following the example above for ocean residence time). This confused scientists because in addition to normal preciptiation inputs the temperatures that year were only slightly warmer, meaning that the lake levels should also have been normal and not extremely low. The water cycle contains the largest chemical flux on Earth. Therefore, the greatest evaporation rates are when the weather is hot and dry, and the greatest water vapor amounts (humidity) in the atmosphere are when the weather is hot and wet. 40 x 103 km3 / year. (C). vulnerability, it is quite likely that water shortages due to human
The water cycle contains the largest
5. The ocean water residence time is just more than 3,100 years, calculated as follows: Ocean Residence Time, Rt = (1,350
[Note that the total amount of water in the atmosphere or the ocean may not change, but the rates of cycling increase at higher temperatures.] Already today parts of the western U.S. have unsustainable water supplies, and by 2050 (Fig. For
106 km3) / (0.425 103 km3/yr)
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These increases are
However, the fact that we can also have lower lake levels (in the early 1980s) when temperature and evaporation were low, means that another factor must be involved beyond simply the temperature alone increasing evaporation. The global water cycle is suggested to have been dominated by regassing, and its implications for geochemical cycles and atmospheric evolution are also discussed. This diagram is an oceanographer’s view of the global water cycle. Our estimates of the flux of water into and out of the ocean can be integrated over its surface all around the globe. In contact with both the oceans and the continents, the thin, transparent atmosphere acts as a conduit connecting the terrestrial and oceanic components of the water cycle. This is because the liquid and vapor states of water are always trying to come to equilibrium, and water will evaporate until the air is saturated with water vapor (cannot hold more) or all the water is gone, whichever comes first. This is where rising warm, moist air drops its moisture burden back on the sea. Figure 1. The droughts seen in the southwestern and western U.S. have been termed "megadroughts" because of their severity and long-term nature. At its most basic, the water cycle is how water continuously moves from the ground to the atmosphere and back again. It consists of 3 parts and
in more detail in the upcoming lecture on the Tropical Rainforest), and
Until now we have talked about the intensity or rates of evaporation increasing with temperature, but in our mass balance model we must know the duration of the evaporation as well. Figure
Current demands for freshwater are unsustainable given water availability, and this problem will only get worse if warming continues. There are 4 major pathways of cycling
after deforestation.
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