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Rainy days are annoying and a nuisance to most of us. Yet rain is very important to our world as it is part of a never-ending cycle in which water is used over and over again. This cycle is called the hydrological cycle or water cycle.
The amount of water in the cycle always stays the same. Some of the water may be stored in the sea, in the air or on land. Later, some of this water will be moved or transferred around the cycle. The main stores and transfers (flows) in the cycle are shown in the diagram below (Figure 1.1).
Stores are a point in the hydrological cycle where water is held or stored. For example, the sea, the atmosphere or the land (rivers, lakes or glaciers).
Transfers (flows) are the movement of water between stores by a number of different processes. For example, evaporation, condensation, precipitation, evapo-transpiration or infiltration).
Water moves from one state to another and this drives our weather.
How does the water cycle work?
How does the water cycle work?
The water cycle begins when water from the sea or a lake evaporates to form water vapour. Water from plants is also turned to water vapour by transpiration.
This water vapour then rises, cools, condenses to form clouds.
As the clouds rise further and cool, precipitation will occur, in the form of rain, hail, snow or sleet.
Some of the water that falls is intercepted by the leaves on the trees.
Some of the water will be stored on the surface (particularly if it is snow), will infiltrate into the soil or will flow over the land as surface run-off.
Some of the water that travelled as infiltration will move horizontally through the soil as through flow.
Some of the water will move down through permeable rock in a process called percolation.
Some of the water stored as groundwater in porous rocks.
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