Components of the Water Cycle

  • Released Thursday, October 8th, 2009
  • Updated Friday, August 25th, 2023 at 12:00AM
  • ID: 3648

Water regulates climate, storing heat during the day and releasing it at night. Water in the ocean and atmosphere carry heat from the tropics to the poles. The process by which water moves around the earth, from the ocean, to the atmosphere, to the land and back to the ocean is called the water cycle. The animations below each portray a component of the water cycle. All use an identical view and camera motion to allow for easy compositing.

Data for the animation of global sea surface temperature was derived from a model run of ECCO's Ocean General Circulation Model. See http://www.ecco-group.org/model.htm for more information on ECCO.

Data for the animation of atmospheric phenomena was created using data from the GEOS-5 atmospheric model on the cubed-sphere, run at 14-km global resolution for 25-days. Variables animated here include evaporation, water vapor and precipitation.

For more information on the GEOS-5 see http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/systems/geos5.

For more information on the cubed-sphere work see http://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/610.3/cubedsphere.html.

All three of these animations are time synchronous throughout the animation to allow cross fades during compositing.

The final animation shown here, a pulsing network of rivers over the continents, represents the flow of water from land back into the ocean, thereby completing the water cycle.

A flat version of these animations can be found in item #3811.

This animation of sea surface temperature shows the transport of heat along the ocean's surface.

This animation of evaporation shows how heating from the sun causes increased evaporation over land during the day.

This animation portrays the flow of atmospheric water vapor around the world.

This animation displays the intensity of precipitation as it flows around the globe, showing heavy precipitation in orange/yellow and light precipitation in purple.

In this animation, pulsing of the global rivers highlights the flow of water from the continents back into the oceans.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio This is a contribution of the Consortium for Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) funded by the National Oceanographic Partnership Program The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).

Series

This visualization can be found in the following series:

Datasets used in this visualization

GEOS-5 Cubed-Sphere (A.K.A. GEOS-5 Atmospheric Model on the Cubed-Sphere)
Model NASA GMAO

The model is the GEOS-5 atmospheric model on the cubed-sphere, run at 14-km global resolution for 30-days. GEOS-5 is described here http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/systems/geos5/ and the cubed-sphere work is described here http://sivo.gsfc.nasa.gov/cubedsphere_overview.html.

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Groundwater Resources of the World
Data Compilation BGR and UNESCO
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Sea Surface Temperature
Model ECCO

Dataset can be found at: http://www.ecco-group.org/

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