2. Global Water Budget
Water is a critical resource that shapes ecosystems, weather patterns, and human development. The global water budget quantifies the total water volume, its distribution, and its movement through the hydrological cycle. Understanding this budget allows engineers to manage water resources sustainably and address challenges such as climate change and water scarcity.
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What we have learnt
- The hydrological cycle includes important processes such as evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and runoff.
- The global water budget consists of various reservoirs and annual fluxes, indicating how water is distributed and used.
- Human activities significantly impact the global water budget, influencing precipitation, evaporation, and groundwater levels.
Key Concepts
- -- Hydrologic Cycle
- The continuous movement of water through evaporation, condensation, precipitation, infiltration, and runoff.
- -- Global Water Budget
- A quantification of the total volume of water on Earth, its distribution among reservoirs, and the annual fluxes between these reservoirs.
- -- Precipitation
- Water that falls from clouds to the Earth's surface, including rainfall, snowfall, sleet, and hail.
- -- Evapotranspiration
- The sum of evaporation from the land surface plus transpiration from plants.
- -- Groundwater
- Water stored underground in aquifers, representing a significant portion of Earth's freshwater.
- -- Cryosphere
- The frozen components of the Earth system, including glaciers and ice caps, which store a substantial amount of global freshwater.
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