As we are facing droughts each and every year more and more I wonder, where the water went? It cant leave the planet and the ice is melting. Is the water bound in things like concrete or other products, or where is it?
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It hasn’t gone anywhere, but the Earth’s weather has changed. We use to get good yearly storms full of rain and snow into the mountains. In the past 20-30 years those storms have stopped dropping so much rain and snow. We have the same amount of water on Earth that we’ve had in recent history, it’s not just getting converted into rain and snow and deposited where we need it any more.
Warmer air can carry more water without dropping it. So the warmer the Earth gets, the warmer the air gets, the more water it can just carry around without giving it to us.
Also, because of climate change, weather patterns have changed. So where we use to predictably get x amount of rain and y amount of snow most years on average, that has dropped way down. And the snow and rain are being deposited elsewhere and causing floods where they use to not have floods.
Lastly, more humans means more consumption. We have more humans than we’ve had before, and more humans living in cities than we’ve had before. So we require more fresh water sources.
So less snow and rain, less storms, more people and more water consumption. Bad combination.
The issue is that water cycles based on weather patterns. The water is all on the planet somewhere there’s we are just moving it from the source and moving it downhill faster than rain can bring it back uphill.
With population growth you pack more people, more industry, more agriculture in one location and the water supply gets strained.
The waves follow the moon and the sun. Earth is this misshapen sphere so when the tides go up, it’s due to the moon’s (or the sun) gravity pulling it. But the land is a separate substance not as flexible as the oceans so it’s not moving precisely at the same pace as the oceans. So a slight divination would make the rain that was supposed to happen in your place move to another place. In other words if it’s not raining anymore where you are, it’s because now it’s raining in some place where it didn’t used to rain.
At least that’s how I understand it, I’m sure Reddit will correct me if i forgot something
You probably walk past it at least once a week now not saying all but theres a fuck load on the shelfs of the supermarket and in the pipes ready for you to drink or take a shit into theres pretty much the same amount of water on this earth as there has always been its just not where it was before man started making things nice for him self so the world on suffers
No but we do lose hydrogen which makes up water, it floats out into space. However we only lose 0.00000000000017% of the Earth’s supply of hydrogen every year. Global warming causes droughts because instead of freezing at the top of mountains and trickling down into rivers it goes straight into the ocean and turns to saltwater causing the tides to rise. Soon major cities like New york and Miami will be underwater
Consider that if you drink a glass of water at least one atom in that glass of water has been through the bladder of Henry the 8th! The earth is a closed system with respect to matter (not completely but overwhelmingly anyway) and water cycles constantly through different locations and forms. Like ice, ground water, clouds, lakes, oceans etc etc. Some of those states like polar ice and ground water can hold water for a very long time and water cycles through very slowly. For example in Australia for rain water to get from the Atherton Tablelands to the Great Artesian Basin under middle of the continent can take 3 million years. So if you interfere with bits of the water cycle you get the idea you can be waiting a long time for that held water to available again. With global heating we are messing with the water cycle big time, it’s not that the water has gone, it’s just not cycling in the easily available to us places like it did before. Does that help?
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