Most of the Earth’s water (around 97%), is contained in the oceans. The polar ice caps hold a further 2%. The remainder (just 1%) is continually recycled through a natural process called the water cycle. The heat of the Sun evaporates water from the sea, lakes and rivers. This produces water vapour, which is held in warm air in the atmosphere. When the vapour moves to a cool area it condenses, forming clouds, and eventually falls to the surface as rain, hail or snow. This waters the land and feeds the world’s water supplies. Most of the water then returns to the oceans, and the cycle continues.
Evaporation, one of the major processes in the cycle, is the transfer of water from the surface of the Earth to the atmosphere. By evaporation, water in the liquid is transferred to the gaseous, or vapour, state. This transfer occurs when some molecules in water mass have attained sufficient kinetic energy to eject themselves from the water surface. The main factors affecting evaporation are temperature, humidity, wind speed, and solar radiation. The direct measurement of evaporation, though desirable, is difficult and possible only at point locations. The principal source of water vapour is the oceans, but evaporation also occurs in soils, snow, and ice. Evaporation from snow and ice, the direct conversion from solid to vapour, is known as sublimation. Transpiration is the evaporation of water through minute pores, or stomata, in the leaves of plants. For practical purposes, transpiration and the evaporation from all water, soils, snow, ice, vegetation, and other surfaces are lumped together and called evapotranspiration, or total evaporation.
Water vapour is the primary form of atmospheric moisture. Although its storage in the atmosphere is comparatively small, water vapour is extremely important in forming the moisture supply for dew, frost, fog, clouds, and precipitation. Practically all water vapour in the atmosphere is confined to the troposphere (the region below 6 to 8 miles [10 to 13 km] altitude).
The transition process from the vapour state to the liquid state is called condensation. Condensation may take place as soon as the air contains more water vapour than it can receive from a free water surface through evaporation at the prevailing temperature. This condition occurs as the consequence of either cooling or the mixing of air masses of different temperatures. By condensation, water vapour in the atmosphere is released to form precipitation.
Precipitation that falls to the Earth is distributed in four main ways: some is returned to the atmosphere by evaporation, some may be intercepted by vegetation and then evaporated from the surface of leaves, some percolate into the soil by infiltration, and the remainder flows directly as surface runoff into the sea. Some of the infiltrated precipitation may later percolate into streams as groundwater runoff. Direct measurement of runoff is made by stream gauges and plotted against time on hydrographs.
Most groundwater is derived from precipitation that has percolate through the soil. Groundwater flow rates, compared with those of surface water, are very slow and variable, ranging from a few millimetres to a few metres a day. Groundwater movement is studied by tracer techniques and remote sensing.
Ice also plays a role in the water cycle. Ice and snow on the Earth’s surface occur in various forms such as frost, sea ice, and glacier ice. When soil moisture freezes, ice also occurs beneath the Earth’s surface, forming permafrost in tundra climates. About 18,000 years ago glaciers and ice caps covered approximately one-third of the Earth’s land surface. Today about 12 percent of the land surface remains covered by ice masses.
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