Dance of the Droplets: Earth’s Freshwater Carousel and How It Is Changing

Earth is a wet planet, kept alive by a flowing mosaic of water molecules. Almost all of that water is held in the salty ocean, but once it evaporates from the ocean surface and leaves the salt behind it will take one of many journeys that shape our world. New technologies are giving us new insights into those journeys, especially for our significant stores of hidden groundwater.

But climate change is shifting the journeys that water takes, bringing flood and drought to new places, and focussing our attention onto something we’ve always taken for granted. This lecture covers the latest understanding of Earth’s water cycle and how it’s changing, and addresses what the future holds.