Q1.
Returning to the picture of the Earth at the start of this chapter, you may have noticed white shapes across the globe. Did you guess what they are?
Answer
They are large masses of clouds.
Those clouds are the link between the ocean and the land:
Sun heats the sea → water evaporates
Water vapour rises and cools → clouds form
Winds carry the clouds over the continents → rain
Rain feeds rivers, wells and fields → rivers return the water to the sea
This whole loop is the water cycle
Water vapour rises and cools → clouds form
Winds carry the clouds over the continents → rain
Rain feeds rivers, wells and fields → rivers return the water to the sea
This whole loop is the water cycle
- India's monsoon rain is exactly this. The south-west monsoon winds pick up moisture over the warm Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea and reach Kerala around the first week of June, then spread across the country. Without it, our agriculture and all life would suffer.
- But the same warm ocean also produces storms — cyclones with extreme rainfall and very strong winds, which damage coastal regions. The Bay of Bengal coast (Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu) is hit by them most often.
One more white patch: the broad white expanse at the bottom of Fig. 2.1 is not cloud. It is Antarctica, which is mostly ice.