Climate change might cause more of violent storms and floods

Komal Bavaskar, D Y Patil University

What is the water cycle? 

The water cycle depicts the continual flow of water inside the Earth’s and atmosphere’s atmosphere. It is a complicated system with several processes. Clouds are formed by the condensing of water vapour, which then falls as rain or snow. Water in various stages circulates through the atmosphere (transportation). The flow of liquid water across the land, into the earth (infiltration and percolation), and through the ground is referred to as runoff (groundwater). Groundwater flows into plants (plant uptake) and evaporates into the atmosphere from plants (transpiration). Snow can spontaneously decompose into a gas (sublimation).

As water circulates through the ecosystem, passing via the atmosphere, ocean, land, and frozen water reserves. It might fall as rain or snow, soak into the earth, flow into a stream, enter the ocean, freeze, or evaporate back into the atmosphere. Plants absorb water from the soil and expel it through transpiration from their leaves. The precipitation and evaporation rates have both increased in recent decades.

What factors are accelerating the water cycle?

The water cycle occurs at different scales at different places. A variety of causes are accelerating the water cycle i.e., Climate change, farming methods, water abstraction, deforestation, etc.

But one of the most significant is climate change i.e., rising temperatures boost the upper limit on the quantity of moisture in the air. This raises the possibility of additional rain. It has evidence by fundamental physics and it was observed general rise in rainfall intensity with rising temperature. 

Many other critical parts of the water cycle would also alter as global temperatures increase, according to the research. These include reduced mountain glaciers, shorter seasonal snow cover, earlier melt, and varying monsoon rain patterns across various areas.

An increasing water cycle indicates that both wet and dry extremes, as well as overall water cycle variability, will rise, but not equally throughout the world.

How intensify water cycle is affected by climate change?

Climate warming exacerbates this cycle because as temperatures rise, more water evaporates into the atmosphere. Warmer air may contain more water vapour, leading to more violent rainstorms and severe consequences such as catastrophic floods in coastal cities throughout the world. The intensity of downpours is determined in part by the amount of water that the air can retain at any given time. As the earth heats, the rate of evaporation from the ocean increases. 

When you heat a large pot of water to see how quickly it evaporates. In the same way, increased evaporation on Earth leads to more severe rain and snow occurrences across the planet.

What is the solution? 

One common thread running across various components of the water cycle is that larger greenhouse gas emissions, which have a greater impact. Policy recommendations are not made by the IPCC. Instead, it gives the scientific data required to properly assess policy options. The outcomes illustrate what the consequences of certain options are likely to be. 

Regardless of the precise objective, it is evident that the intensity of climate change impacts is directly related to greenhouse gas emissions: reducing emissions would lower impacts. Every fraction of a degree is significant.

Global status of rainfall:

Rainfall intensity is predicted to rise throughout most geographical regions, while the Mediterranean, southern South America, and western North America are expected to have the greatest increases in dryness.

Globally, daily severe precipitation occurrences are expected to increase by around 7% for every 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) rise in global temperatures.

The scientific data in the study plainly warn world leaders that limiting global warming to the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) would need urgent, fast, and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Also read: Easy-Prime – A genome editing program

Reference:

1. Barlow, M., & Conversation, T. The water cycle is intensifying as the climate warms, more intense storms and flooding as a result. https://phys.org/news/2021-08-climate-intense-storms-result.html

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Author info:

Komal Bavaskar is pursuing an M.Sc in Biotech. She is a resourceful person with a positive and proactive attitude when faced with diversity. She is interested in the research field and is a very dedicated worker who sets realistic goals and strives to do the best she can for whatever task is presented to me.

Published articles: –

1. https://bioxone.in/news/worldnews/understanding-the-concept-of-membrane-channels/
2. https://bioxone.in/news/worldnews/first-interchangeable-biosimilar-insulin-for-diabetic-patients/