water cycle

British  

noun

1. Also called: hydrologic cycle.  the circulation of the earth's water, in which water evaporates from the sea into the atmosphere, where it condenses and falls as rain or snow, returning to the sea by rivers or returning to the atmosphere by evapotranspiration

---

water cycle Scientific  

1. See hydrologic cycle

---

Example Sentences

Rainfall moves slowly through the water cycle, needing to soak deep through the soil and way down into the groundwater stores.

From BBC

“The rapid water cycle change that the planet has experienced over the last decade has unleashed a wave of rapid drying.”

From Los Angeles Times

And the water cycle now is not just a geophysical but also a sort of moral and political and bodily phenomenon for us as humans.

From Salon

This switch is driven by a warming world speeding up the water cycle and allowing the atmosphere to hold more water.

From BBC

But Miocene-style hydrological or water cycles favor high altitude wind events, like cyclones and hurricanes, that transport heat and moisture evaporating from the tropics to higher latitudes, or California’s intense seasonal rainstorms.

From Salon