How can the water cycle be disrupted?
1 Answer
The ultimate disruption would be if the sun snuffed out - the water cycle would grind to a halt very quickly.
Explanation:
The water cycle can't really be disrupted, but it can change where water is distributed on the planet.
For example, during the ice ages huge amounts of water were evaporated from the oceans into the atmosphere and fall as snow in the Northern latitudes. This built up massive ice sheets which then started to flow southward. So much water transfers from the oceans to the cryosphere (frozen ice) that ocean sea levels have been estimated to drop by over 120 meters or nearly 400 feet during the last glacial maximum - 20,000 years ago.
Low sea levels create land bridges for species to migrate to new areas. A land bridge between Russia and Alaska was created about 20,000 years ago and this allowed earlier humans to migrate into North America.
With global warming, scientists also think that the water cycle will speed up as a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. This means that heavy rainfall events are likely to increase in frequency and intensity - a serious change in the water cycle.
