During a drought, where does the water evaporated from lakes and rivers go? If it just went into the atmosphere you’d expect that to then quickly get saturated and start raining.

Question

During a drought, where does the water evaporated from lakes and rivers go? If it just went into the atmosphere you’d expect that to then quickly get saturated and start raining.

In: Earth Science

Answer 1

A drought is a localised event, the atmosphere covers the whole globe. Just because the water cycle guarantees the evaporated water will rain back to the surface, doesn’t mean it will fall when and where you need it to. A flood in Germany in July doesn’t help the people of California suffering a drought in February.

That’s especially an issue when the environmental conditions that make it less likely to rain somewhere, are the same conditions that contributed to the drought in the first place.