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What Is The Water Cycle

The water cycle describes the continuous movement of water on, above, and below the surface of the Earth. It involves four stages: 1) Evaporation and transpiration where water is absorbed from bodies of water and plants and evaporated into the air. 2) Condensation where water vapor condenses into liquid water in clouds. 3) Precipitation where water falls back to Earth as rain, snow, sleet or hail. 4) Runoff and infiltration where water flows across the ground surface or sinks into the ground, replenishing streams, rivers, aquifers and eventually returning to the seas and oceans to complete the cycle.

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109 views

What Is The Water Cycle

The water cycle describes the continuous movement of water on, above, and below the surface of the Earth. It involves four stages: 1) Evaporation and transpiration where water is absorbed from bodies of water and plants and evaporated into the air. 2) Condensation where water vapor condenses into liquid water in clouds. 3) Precipitation where water falls back to Earth as rain, snow, sleet or hail. 4) Runoff and infiltration where water flows across the ground surface or sinks into the ground, replenishing streams, rivers, aquifers and eventually returning to the seas and oceans to complete the cycle.

Uploaded by

nilmina
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as ODT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What is the Water Cycle (Hydrolic cycle)?

The water cycle is simply the complete journey that water makes in its life, from
one place to the other, and from one state to the other. As the word cycle
suggests, there is no starting point. This means that we can begin at any point
and follow its path until it gets to where we started again.
Where does water come from, and where does all the rainwater end up? What
about the melting snow? Why is it not filling up the lakes and lagoons and even
the seas? How did the snow and rainwater find its way up in the sky in the first
place? Today we will learn a bit more about what really happens to water in all
the various places on earth.
Let us see the cycle and stages in this diagram:

Stage 1: Evaporation and transpiration


Let us begin with the oceans and large water bodies. Their large surface areas
absorb the sun's energy (heat), warming their surfaces. As the water heats up, it
evaporates (turns from liquid to vapor). In addition to that, green plants (forests
and all vegetation cover) also release moisture into the air in a process
called transpiration. Rising air currents, resulting from unequal air pressure,
lifts the vapor high up into the atmosphere.
Stage 2: Condensation
Up there, cooler temperatures cause the vapor to condense (vapor turning back
into liquid). Winds and air masses move the moisture around a bit, forming
clouds. With time, they become heavier with water. This develops into rain-

bearing clouds.
Stage 3: Precipitation
The water now falls from the sky in the form of rain, snow, sleet and hail.
Stage 4: Runoff and Infiltration
As the water falls to the ground, they find their way on the ground surface into
puddles, streams and rivers. This is by the natural force of gravity, aided by
slopes and gullies on sloping surfaces.
Besides runoff, water is also absorbed into the soil. This is called infiltration.
The absorbed water may even go deeper and replenish aquifers and other water
pockets that exist naturally below the surface of the earth. This is known as
percolation. Sometimes water in the ground moves up to the surfaces and can
evaporate or run-off again.
So where does the run-off end upin the seas and oceans and water bodies
where we started. This picture is what is known as the water cycle. Now let us
take the stages into a bit more detail, and learn what actually happens at each
stage. Let us begin with evaporation.

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