Global Climate System at Risk as Global Warming Speeds Up Water Cycle: New Study

Global warming is causing potential environmental repercussions to the global climate system as it accelerates the Earth's water cycle, according to a new study by researchers from Spain.

It was found that as evaporation increases, there will be imbalanced precipitation of water across the planet.

Global Climate System

(Photo : Photo by CLAUDIO CRUZ/AFP via Getty Images)

In the new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports on April 15, scientists from the Institut de Ciencies del Mar in Barcelona claimed that global warming makes the water cycle precipitate 90% of evaporated and condensed water back to the sea, while only 10% will precipitate back to land.

An accelerated water cycle not only increases the intensity of storms over the sea and land, but it has already caused an excessive amount of rainfall in some polar areas, where it should be snowing, and also hastens ice melting, according to Estrella Olmedo, the lead author of the study, as cited by Phys.org.

Following the findings, the scientists suggested that monitoring is the key to observing such an impact on the global climate system, and recommended that there must be standardization of ocean models.

Notably, this approach will reportedly focus more on water density, which is determined by its salinity and temperature, since the water cycle depends on it.

Also Read: UN Report: Measures Against Climate Change and Global Warming not Sufficient

What is the Water Cycle?

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) defines the water cycle as an important aspect of the weather patterns on Earth.

The process allows water to move across the planet through evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and surface runoff.

NASA underscored precipitation as a vital component, wherein evaporated water from the ground and the oceans cool off and condensed into the clouds that will fall either as rain, snow, or hail.

This recurring ground-to-atmosphere process also allowed meteorologists and scientists to understand the climate and make an accurate weather forecast.

Although this process has been relatively stable for the past several thousand years, there are some instances when global warming has significantly affected the water cycle due to increasing temperatures and the warming of the oceans worldwide.

Climate Change and Global Warming

The water cycle determines the weather patterns but it is also the other way around.

Since global temperatures have increased over the past several decades, multiple anecdotal evidence and meteorological data have shown there is an uptick in weather phenomena in terms of frequency, intensity, and time of occurrence.

This entails that climate change has altered the weather, leading to more rain, severe flooding, extreme drought, stronger hurricanes, and frequent heatwaves, according to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a US-based consortium of more than 100 educational institutions.

In terms of torrential rain and flash floods, the rising warm temperatures will pave the way for more evaporation and precipitate more amount of rainfall in some areas.

In addition, ocean warming will increase the occurrence of hurricanes and other related storm systems.

Weather forecasts over recent years have indicated that the length of storm season in other countries has stretched more than their usual average period.

Furthermore, the UCAR underlined that drought and heatwaves are worsening since the above-average temperatures set the condition for evaporated water into the atmosphere to quickly dissipate before they can even reach the water cycle phase of precipitation.