Скачать или смотреть Climatic Factor: Water

On Earth, liquid water exists on the surface in the form of oceans, lakes and rivers. It also
exists below ground—as groundwater, in wells and aquifers. Water vapor is most visible
as clouds and fog.
The frozen part of Earth's hydrosphere is made of ice: glaciers, ice caps and icebergs. The
frozen part of the hydrosphere has its own name, the cryosphere.
Water moves through the hydrosphere in a cycle. Water collects in clouds, then falls to
Earth in the form of rain or snow. This water collects in rivers, lakes and oceans. Then
it evaporates into the atmosphere to start the cycle all over again. This is called the water
cycle.
The global water cycle can be described with nine major physical processes which form a
continuum of water movement.
It can be studied by starting at any of the following processes: evaporation,
condensation, precipitation, interception, infiltration, percolation, transpiration, runoff,
and storage.
Evaporation:
Evaporation occurs when the physical state of water is changed from a liquid state to a
gaseous state. A considerable amount of heat, about 600 calories of energy for each
gram of water, is exchanged during the change of state.
Typically, solar radiation and other factors such as air temperature, vapor pressure, wind,
and atmospheric pressure affect the amount of natural evaporation that takes place in
any geographic area.
Condensation:
Condensation is the process by which water vapor changes it's physical state from a
vapor, most commonly, to a liquid.
Water vapor condenses onto small airborne particles to form dew, fog, or clouds.
Precipitation:
Precipitation is the process that occurs when any and all forms of water particles fall
from the atmosphere and reach the ground.
At saturation point, if temperature is lowered condensation of water vapour in form rain
drops, dew, frost, sleet, snow, etc. this is called Precipitation.
Interception:
Interception is the process of interrupting the movement of water in the chain of
transportation events leading to streams.
The interception can take place by vegetal cover or depression storage in puddles and in
land formations such as rills and furrows
Infilteration:
Infiltration is the physical process involving movement of water through the boundary
area where the atmosphere interfaces with the soil.
The surface phenomenon is governed by soil surface conditions.
Percolation:
Percolation is the movement of water though the soil, and it's layers, by gravity and
capillary forces.
The prime moving force of groundwater is gravity.
Transpiration:
Transpiration is the biological process that occurs mostly in the day. Water inside of
plants is transferred from the plant to the atmosphere as water vapor through numerous
individual leaves openings.
Plants transpire to move nutrients to the upper portion of the plants and to cool the
leaves exposed to the sun. Leaves undergoing rapid transpiration can be significantly
cooler than the surrounding air.
Runoff:
Runoff is flow from a drainage basin or watershed that appears in surface streams.
It generally consists of the flow that is unaffected by artificial diversions, storages or
other works that society might have on or in a stream channel.
Storage:
There are three basic locations of water storage that occur in the planetary water cycle.
Water is stored in the atmosphere; water is stored on the surface of the earth, and
water stored in the ground.