FIVE

THE GREAT WATER CYCLES

The atmosphere is . . . not merely a biological product, but more probably a biological construction: not living, but, like cat’s fur, an extension of a living system designed to maintain a chosen environment.

JAMES LOVELOCK, GAIA

Water is the engine and workhorse of the planet. It is always moving in cycles, great and small, slow and fast. Water is always circulating in an exchange between the deep, steam-heated water of Earth’s magma and the deep groundwater above the mantle. In the slow cycle, groundwater is held in deep aquifers or glaciers for millennia, gradually seeping through to the surface through springs or from melting glaciers. The fast cycle lubricates the active parts of the atmosphere, with 500,000 cubic kilometers of water evaporating annually from the ocean and land as vapor, condensing into clouds and precipitating back to the surface. There are also the cycles of the circulation systems in organisms.

THE GREAT AERIAL OCEAN

The great aerial ocean is a term coined by Alfred Russel Wallace, cofounder with Charles Darwin of the theory of evolution by natural selection. It well describes the intimate relationship between the oceans and Earth’s atmosphere, the sun driving the great water cycle. The heat received on Earth’s surface is greatest at the equator, which leads to a transfer of heat from the equator toward the poles. Three-quarters of this heat is carried by water in the atmosphere, one-quarter in the ocean currents. This cycle is a fundamental role of water for the maintenance of life on this planet. The primary cycle is atmospheric; the atmosphere is warmed from below, while the oceans are heated at the surface. The surface winds drive the ocean currents, assisted by the spinning of Earth on its axis.

THE ATMOSPHERE

The atmosphere could be described as the front line of the water story. In its early days, Earth’s atmosphere must have been very dark, hot, and thick, with a high percentage of CO₂, hydrogen, sulfides, and methane. This hostile mixture persisted for about two billion years, and then a remarkable thing happened. Cushion formations of bacteria, called “stromatholites,” appeared—the first oxygen producers—and over the next billion years gradually built up enough oxygen in the atmosphere to prepare for the emergence of land-based animals, aided later by the photosynthesis of plants.

The atmosphere, for most of Earth’s history, has been an unstable environment, disturbed by volcanic eruptions, cosmic collisions, and other unpredictable events. It was only when Earth calmed down sufficiently for life to become established on land that Gaia was able to develop climates necessary for the progress of evolution.

The geological record shows that there were times when climatic conditions were more balanced, more or less defined by geological periods, interrupted by violent earth changes. The violent periods were typified by tectonic shifts, volcanic activity, mountain formation, cosmic collisions, global warming and cooling, ice ages, species extinctions, and later, carbon dioxide shifts.

We don’t know a great deal about the composition of the atmosphere in past geological eras. For the past 500 million years it must have been a mixture of simple gases, not dissimilar to ours today. The atmosphere is highly compressible, so that at 18,000 feet above the sea, it is only half as dense as at sea level. Ninety percent of all the atmospheric gases are found below fifteen kilometers (about nine miles) above sea level, yet the atmosphere extends up to one hundred kilometers (about sixty-two miles) above Earth’s surface. The overall thickness of the atmosphere at the poles is half what it is at the equator. Earth’s gravity is what prevents the thin atmosphere from escaping.

The atmosphere is now composed of 78 percent nitrogen, 20.9 percent oxygen, and .08 percent argon. The remaining .03 percent is trace gases. One is ozone, present in tiny amounts, which keeps us from going blind, getting sun-caused cancer, and so on. Then there are the greenhouse gases, of which water vapor comprises 60 percent; and most of the rest is CO₂, with a smattering of methane and CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons).

The amount of water in the atmosphere varies considerably, depending on the temperature (cold air can hold very little), but doesn’t exceed 4 percent by volume. Nevertheless, it is water vapor that carries the heat and creates the weather, influenced by the amount of water carried (degree of humidity) and, of course, temperature.

Water vapor has a complex role in the atmosphere. We tend to think of CO₂ as the principal greenhouse gas, but water vapor absorbs about 70 percent of solar radiation, mainly in the stratosphere. The two gases act together, creating positive feedback loops. So a CO₂ concentration warming the atmosphere allows it to take up more moisture, which then further heats the atmosphere.

Without plants and algae to soak up our waste CO₂, we would soon run out of oxygen and suffocate in CO₂. This is a self-sustaining cycle that is the foundation for life on Earth. The amount of carbon in the cycle is prodigious. Living things account for a trillion tons, while the amount stored in the ground is several thousandfold greater, and the oceans contain more than fifty times what is found in the atmosphere.

Are the North and South Poles Changing Places?

The magnetic poles are not fixed but tend to shift in the course of a year. Quite recently their strength has shown a marked decrease, which may indicate that the north and south magnetic poles might soon change places. This gradual weakening, with magnetic eddies developing all over the planet until they concentrate at the opposite pole, occurs regularly every 500,000 years or so, and we are overdue. The effects would be a temporary loss of the magnetic shield that protects us from solar storms, occasional events that have in the past knocked out electricity networks and communication satellites. It would also, until the new poles were reestablished, result in worldwide displays of the aurorae. (Iain Stewart, Earth: The Power of the Planet.)

The Atmospheric Layers

The atmosphere can be divided into several well-marked layers (see figure 5.1). The lowest layer, the troposphere, is the zone of weather phenomena and turbulence. Water vapor represents 75 percent of the total gas mass of the troposphere. Temperature decreases with altitude up to its upper boundary, the tropopause, to a temperature that is just right for enough water to vaporize to produce the rains that continue the water cycle, irrigating the land. This varies in altitude from 17 kilometers (11 miles) at the equator to 11 kilometers (6.8 miles) at the poles. Above this height the temperature remains constant, then increases, causing a temperature inversion that stops the water vapor from escaping, ensuring the water cycle’s reliability.

Figure 5.1. Cross-section of the atmosphere, showing the four major layers. It is composed of nitrogen (78 percent), oxygen (21 percent), and argon (1 percent). There is a tiny amount (0.000001 percent) of ozone gas, without which we would go blind and get skin cancer. Only a small amount is breathable air—at 77°F, water vapor makes up 3 percent of what we inhale. (Tim Flannery)

The second major division is the stratosphere, which extends from the tropopause to the stratopause at about fifty kilometers (thirty miles). Ozone, the gas that protects life from ultraviolet radiation, is formed at the stratopause and accumulates lower in the stratosphere. Modern jet aircraft fly in this level of the atmosphere.

Above this is the mesosphere, which has sufficient gas particles to burn up meteors, acting as a protection for Earth. There is just enough water here for noctilucent clouds to form. Above this is the thermosphere at eighty-five kilometers, the environment for the space shuttle and for the aurora borealis (see plate 9). This awe-inspiring phenomenon is thought to be caused by plasma particles from the sun being deflected toward the magnetic poles and colliding with air and water vapor molecules, surrendering their energy as photon emissions.1

The Cold Trap

The tropopause is part of the greenhouse effect that keeps Earth’s temperature just right for life. It is often called the Cold Trap because the temperature inversion stops air rising and holds in the water vapor, which is the most important greenhouse gas and the basic driver of Earth’s water cycle (see figure 5.2). You might have been in the mountains on a cold winter’s day and observed rising smoke forming a layer caused by such a temperature inversion.

The cause of this Cold Trap is not widely agreed upon. Peter Bunyard, the British meteorologist, believes it is caused by the reaction of oxygen (produced by plant photosynthesis) with ozone. This is a good example of the biosphere’s self-regulation, supporting James Lovelock’s Gaia theory. This ingenious system must have been in place two billion years ago when the first primitive organisms started producing oxygen.

Figure 5.2. The Cold Trap at the tropopause (Peter Bunyard)

CLIMATES

Balanced climates are vital to terrestrial life. Their present forms probably date from Caledonian times about 400 million years ago, when the first forests and land animals became established and high-quality water was an evolutionary requirement. Before this, climates were perhaps irrelevant. The atmosphere became an invaluable shield against harmful radiation and, with vegetation, was the indispensable thermostat to ensure the optimum environmental conditions for evolution to proceed.

There is insufficient awareness of how much of the sun’s energy is reflected back to space by ice and snow (the albedo effect). The resultant cooling of the polar regions produces a larger climatic contrast between the tropics and the poles than in unglaciated times. The world’s atmospheric and oceanic circulatory system balances these out, creating a climate fit for a complex species like Man to develop his enormous potential. The average world temperature is lower in glaciated times. As we have already noted, an unglaciated planet would not favor Man’s evolutionary potential, unless the sun’s energy continues to wane.

A climate derives from the specific way in which the given energy from the sun is affected by the local influences of moisture from the ocean, continental mass, temperature, and topography. It varies according to latitude and season. So, for example, the plains of India warm up in the summer, drawing in the damp maritime air from the tropical oceans. The mass of the Himalayas forces this damp air to rise and release deluges, known as the monsoon.

Continental masses tend to produce areas of high pressure. Climates are the result of many local factors, such as wind belts (jet stream, roaring forties, trade winds of the sub-equatorial region, El Niño, and so on). A climate is also affected by turbulence in the weather, so in temperate latitudes, where there is more mixing of different types of air masses (see the discussion of the Ferrel circulatory system), changeable weather patterns determine climatic variations. This is particularly true of a coastal environment, such as that of the British Isles. The El Niño effect, when the warm southern Pacific Ocean current changes its direction of flow, is at a maximum early in the second decade of the twenty-first century, which is likely to have adverse effects on worldwide weather.

Air masses play a large part in both climate and the resultant weather. An air mass that forms over the ocean will have high humidity, while a continental air mass generally has low humidity. The boundaries between air masses are called fronts, which tend to be the breeding grounds for storms and unsettled weather. People respond very differently to varying humidity, to the amount of sun, and to stormy conditions. The change in the seasons also affects people differently. This will often determine where one decides to work or settle.

The British Isles are interesting in that they don’t have a climate of their own but are subjected to seven different climate types. No wonder the weather forecasters have a difficult time! The islands are at the crossroads of several air masses, demonstrating the way that huge differences in moisture content and temperature affect the resulting weather. The west side of Britain is influenced by the humidity of the ocean and by the warming Gulf Stream; the east comes under the influence of the continental climates; and northern air streams can have a great cooling effect.

There is also the powerful jet stream, favored by commercial aircraft flying eastward, which flows like a giant river at about 120 miles an hour at altitudes of about 30,000 feet. The jet stream can change its normal position from the ocean off Iceland to the south or southeast of Britain and can have a disruptive effect on British weather. In the summers of 2007 and 2008 it caused some areas to experience an average month’s rainfall in a couple of hours, while torrid heat baked the Black Sea and the Mediterranean regions.

Land heats up more than water does but loses its heat more quickly (for instance, at night). Low pressure cells or depressions often come in a series, bred by weather fronts or perturbations in major wind streams.

WEATHER AND CLOUDS

We usually think of weather as variety. When I lived in the United States, where in summer the skies are often cloudless, I used to yearn for the fluffy clouds of home.

When we learn how special and magical water is, we might accept its gifts more graciously. Have you ever gone out in a light drizzle and tilted your head to let your face become refreshingly moistened? To walk barefoot on a dew-kissed lawn at dawn can be a most invigorating experience!

In winter, the weather can bring some astonishing effects, like the magic of a fresh snowfall, which produces a strange silence in the landscape and muffled sounds, or ice forming on tree branches or power and telephone cables.*22 The most magical of all is when fog freezes on a spider’s web.

The atmosphere is largely invisible except for clouds, which are valuable in alerting us to changing weather. They can tell us when cold air is coming in or a warm front is approaching. There are three main families of clouds: cumulus, including the towering cumulo-nimbus thunder clouds; stratus, layer clouds of middle altitudes, which cover the whole sky; and cirrus, icy high clouds that spread across the heavens and portend a weather change. Clouds form when rising air expands and cools, allowing water vapor molecules to clump together and condense.

Water vapor forms when the sun evaporates moisture from the ocean’s surface. It also collects through transpiration from plants, particularly from the equatorial rain forests. The vapor is mixed through the lower atmosphere (up to twelve kilometers) by turbulence. There is very little water vapor or ice above this height.*23 The main role of water in the atmosphere is as a greenhouse gas, contributing up to 60 percent of the total greenhouse effect.

Clouds form from surplus moisture in fully saturated air. The saturation level is called the dew point, which depends on temperature. Warm air can hold two or three times the amount of moisture (and energy) as cool air, so you may get thunderstorms from warm, saturated air and only drizzle from cool.

Condensation in the air rarely happens without some impurity upon which the droplet can form. The air particles may be dust, smoke particles, salts, or other “wettable” nuclei. On land, condensation will form as dew on any object or plant, which means it is pure water. There is much folklore about the magical qualities of dew versus rain.

One of the most ancient techniques for retrieving moisture from the air was the creation of dew ponds. These are not connected to groundwater or designed to catch rainfall, yet they always contain some water, condensed from the night air. They were made typically on the downs of southern England, insulated so that they remained cooler than the sun-warmed earth. They were often 20 meters (70 feet) wide, and 1.2 meters (4 feet) deep.

The optical effects of light on water vapor and ice particles can be extraordinary. The most striking of these is the rainbow, caused by refraction of light, which functions in the same way as a glass prism. When the sun breaks out behind you during a shower, the water vapor breaks up the light into the colors of the spectrum.

Other effects are rings around the moon or sun through high cloud, sometimes with a full-color spectrum. From a mountaintop in winter you may see the “glories”—a shadow of yourself projected by a low sun onto the cloud below, with colored rings around your head. The better-known Brocken specter is similar but with a longer distance to the shadow. These coronae depend on ice crystals rather than liquid water.

I found that gliding, which depends on finding updrafts of warm air, taught me so much about atmospheric air movements. It is fascinating to see how layers of clouds of varying heights often move in different directions. Clearly there’s a lot more going on in the atmosphere than meets the eye. It is a very complex system of air currents, with air masses of different temperatures and humidity that sometimes clash and produce dramatic weather.

ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION

The lower atmosphere acts rather like a gigantic heat engine constantly seeking to balance the temperature difference between the equator and the poles. Rising and descending air converts the heat energy into kinetic energy to provide the horizontal motion of the air streams within the troposphere (whose upper boundary is from nine to eighteen kilometers above Earth’s surface).

The wind belts and jet streams circling the planet are steered by three cells—the Hadley, Ferrel, and polar cells (see figure 5.3)—which are separated by boundaries of calmer air. The Hadley cell is an active, closed loop system extending from the equator to latitudes 30°N and S, where the air descends, creating an area of high pressure. Some of this descending air moves along the surface, creating the trade winds. The Hadley cell moves farther north in the northern summer, and vice versa in the southern.

The polar cell is also a fairly simple system, with warm moist air rising at about 60° latitude up to the top of the troposphere, moving toward the pole and sinking down to create an area of high pressure and the polar easterly winds in the north and westerly winds near the southern pole.

Between these two circulatory systems is an area of more variable circulation, called the Ferrel cell, which acts like a ball bearing between the other two systems. While the upper winds and the jet stream will be prevailing westerlies, the lower air masses are influenced by high- and low-pressure areas that can cause large variations in wind patterns.

Figure 5.3. Ferrel atmospheric cells. Atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere. (Peter Bunyard)

The varying path of the polar front jet stream has a significant impact on the weather. Its usual path with southwesterly winds brings most of Britain’s more miserable wet weather. When it shifts northward, Britain is bathed in hot, dry weather, while regions to the south are drenched in unseasonable rain.

CIRCULATION OF THE OCEANS

The oceans formed early in Earth’s history, around three and a half billion years ago, probably achieving their present salinity level about one billion years ago. They were to become the womb of life, from about 1.3 billion years ago until Caledonian times, some 400 million years ago, when the first plants and animals appeared on land. The oceans soon became the principal absorber of CO₂ from the atmosphere, which helped the planet cool and prepare for the biodiversity of life. This ongoing role as a carbon sink has probably been its most important role in evolution. Marine life became abundant within a further 500 million years, absorbing CO₂ from the water. The oceans nurtured a complex evolutionary journey for sea life.

The oceans basically control the environment and the world’s climate. They receive most of the sun’s energy, as well as energy from the cosmos, and provide water vapor for the atmosphere. The fact that we know far more about the land than we do about the ocean is a serious deficiency.

The basic oceanic circulation is driven by surface winds and by the Coriolis effect of Earth’s rotation, counterclockwise as viewed from above the North Pole. This deflects liquids to the east as they flow from the equator to the poles in the Northern Hemisphere and to the west in the Southern Hemisphere. It is initiated in the area of the Gulf of Mexico forming a strong current, the Gulf Stream, which flows up the eastern side of North America to Newfoundland and then crosses the Atlantic toward western Europe. The warmth of this current raises the temperature of the British Isles by about 4°C.

As it turns west to the south of Greenland, the Gulf Stream meets the cold, saltier waters coming down from the Arctic Ocean, which act like a pump pulling the stream into the deep. There it returns to the southern Atlantic and then into the Indian and Pacific Oceans as a slow bottom current. In the northern Pacific it wells up and returns as a surface flow, back through the Indian and (south) Atlantic Oceans to complete the thermohaline circulation system (a kind of conveyor belt in the ocean linking surface water with deep currents), with branches to the southern oceans. The complete circulation takes as much as one thousand years to complete (see plate 10).

There is much concern over recent research that shows the Gulf Stream’s flow rate diminished 30 percent in the thirteen years between 1992 and 2005, caused by fresh meltwater from Greenland’s ice cap, which is believed to interfere with planetary circulation by stopping the Gulf Stream’s surface waters from sinking and making their way to the deeper currents.

It is thought that a slowing or shutting down of the Gulf Stream has happened a number of times in the historical past, bringing very cold conditions to western Europe and to the east coast of North America. These climatic changes can happen suddenly and may last for a century or more.

MONSOONS AND TSUNAMIS

A summer combination of strong evaporation from the ocean with land warming can draw in very humid air masses in the tropical and subtropical latitudes. The southern Asian summer monsoon is initiated by dry air rising from the warming Tibetan high plateau, which pulls the humid air in from the Indian Ocean. As we have seen earlier, the enormous Himalayan mountain range causes these moist air masses to rise and deposit vast amounts of rainfall.

Oceans can produce devastating damage to coastal regions with a long-range wave pattern called a tsunami, Japanese for “harbor wave,” usually caused by underwater seismic activity. These wave systems can travel at speeds greater than 800 kph (500 mph) across thousands of miles of ocean, slowing as they approach land.2 Historically, the damage caused when they hit a landmass was greatly lessened by forests of mangrove, coastal plants that can tolerate seawater and act as a shock absorber.

Technological Man does not understand their significance and has steadily replaced these safety barriers with profitable shrimp farms and rice paddies. The enormous loss of life in the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2008 Burmese typhoon, and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 would have been mostly avoided with intact mangrove swamps.

THE TERRESTRIAL WATER CYCLE

The underground water cycle is a vital part of water’s story, creating aquifers and huge storage systems that have remained, even beneath deserts, for many millions of years (until technological Man, without a thought for the future, began draining them unsustainably). Wells and springs are part of this system. The relationship between underground and surface water cycles is significant. Working together, they form a balanced system of fresh water of high enough quality to provide optimum conditions for biodiversity.

This combined cycle of water, minerals, and trace elements, kept active for millions of years by occasional orogeny, allowed nutrients to penetrate the banks of rivers, create fertile flood plains, and with the cooperation of plants and bacteria, gradually build up a soil profile, often many feet in thickness. From the onset of each episode of mountain building, it might take scores of millions of years to establish the soil fertility required for abundant growth and forests. The forest was Nature’s brilliant innovation for the next surge of evolutionary expansion, at its most developed in the tropical rain forest.

Vegetation plays a crucial role in the water cycle. It creates a climate that allows life to evolve fruitfully with increasing complexity, biodiversity, and quality by producing oxygen through photosynthesis and highly energized water through transpiration.

Trees do this most efficiently, and the tropical rain forests have huge impact on the world’s climates (see chapter 8). The greatest tragedy affecting the future of humanity is the collusion of world leaders with greedy commercial interests to destroy the rain forests. Of primary concern is the climate, without which species biodiversity cannot exist, but there is also tremendous loss of species, including valuable plants that have not yet been properly studied or collected.

THE FULL HYDROLOGICAL CYCLE

In the same way that blood flows through the arteries and veins of the human body, so does water flow through the lithosphere of our planetary body. The cyclical movement of water from subterranean regions to the atmosphere and back again is called the terrestrial water cycle.

The diagram opposite (figure 5.4) shows the full hydrological cycle. Fresh water evaporates from the sea, rises, condenses, and falls as rain. Some sinks into the earth and some drains away over the ground surface, depending on whether the ground is forested and what type of temperature gradient is active. In areas of natural forest where a positive temperature gradient normally prevails, about 85 percent of rainfall is retained; of this, 15 percent is used by vegetation and humus, and about 70 percent sinks to the groundwater aquifer and underground stream to recharge and pick up the negative energy charge of the earth.

In a natural forest mature trees with deep roots bring up this negatively charged water, along with vital minerals and trace elements from the deeper soils. Trees act as biocondensers, harmonizing positive energy from the sun with the negative energy of the earth (see chapter 8). As a result, the evapotranspiration from the leaves of the trees is a balanced, creative energy.

The forest, as a more dynamic living system, creates transpiration that carries the subtle energy (nonmaterial) imprint of all the resonances of the complex biosystem, including the subterranean elements. Rainfall generated from the forest carries this beneficial influence. The ocean, although it is recharged by undersea volcanic eruptions and exposure to the atmosphere, mainly consumes all it produces and therefore lacks these dynamic qualities. This is best explained in terms of homeopathic theory, in which the greater the dilution of a substance, the more powerful its energetic effect. This is an aspect of the water’s ability to carry information, which we shall be exploring later.

The reduction in evapotranspiration from the dynamic forests substantially affects the quality of water vapor and its distribution in the atmosphere. Water vapor created by the natural forest has been balanced by fertile energies from the earth that bring with it the power to stimulate and heal. Water vapor from the oceans has more of the raw untamed energy of the sun, and global warming increases evaporation from the oceans. Without the forest’s water there is a greater contrast between areas with abundant water vapor and those with almost none. This greatly disrupts weather patterns and causes an increase in violent storms, hurricanes, and serious flooding near coasts, while the areas away from coastal winds suffer drought and cold night temperatures.

Figure 5.4. Full hydrological circulation. The full hydrological cycle links precipitation with groundwater circulation, bringing important energy exchange. (Callum Coats)

THE HALF HYDROLOGICAL CYCLE

Man’s clearing of trees and groundcover exposes the land surface, which allows the ground surface to overheat, causing a negative temperature gradient in the soil. This means that the cooler rain cannot penetrate into the warmer ground, and fast surface runoff in areas of heavy rainfall causes catastrophic floods. Recent floods in Central America, Colombia, Mozambique, Assam, and Bangladesh were all caused by deforestation on high ground.

This disruption of the natural water cycle, which Schauberger called the half hydrological cycle, is now prevalent almost worldwide and has contributed significantly to our present climate change. Notice the difference between figure 5.5, below, and figure 5.4. The drawing below shows that in the absence of tree cover, the water table has sunk. Once the forest has been removed, the exposed ground heats up rapidly, all the more so if dry.

This type of evaporation, now lacking evapotranspiration from living things, has more destructive energies. If the rainfall is excessive, flooding inevitably occurs. In many hot countries denuded of vegetation, dry valleys and creeks can be suddenly engulfed by a wall of water, as terrifying flash floods sweep away everything in their paths.

In the absence of trees and groundcover to absorb it, rainwater spreads widely over the surface of the ground, resulting in massive abnormal reevaporation. The increase in water vapor in the atmosphere soon causes increased precipitation. One flood causes another, while in inland areas, droughts become more frequent. The only answer to this vicious cycle is a massive international campaign to plant trees, particularly in the warmer latitudes.

Figure 5.5. Half hydrological circulation. When the ground becomes warmer than the precipitation, through deforestation, it cannot absorb the nourishing rain. (Callum Coats)

The most serious result of the half cycle is that there is no replenishment of the groundwater. When the groundwater level drops, the supply of nutrients to vegetation is curtailed; the essential soil moisture, trace elements, and other nutrients that tree roots normally raise for the benefit of other plants sink below reach. Any water being evaporated into the atmosphere becomes virtually lifeless, lacking in the energy and qualities that groundwater acquires, and results in desertification, which is becoming prevalent in many tropical areas. Schauberger called this stalemate a “biological short circuit.”

The limited circulation of the half cycle also increases the intensity of thunderstorms. These can raise the water vapor to levels far higher than normal. At altitudes of forty to eighty kilometers, vapor is exposed to much stronger ultraviolet and high-energy gamma radiation that breaks up the water molecule, separating the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The hydrogen then rises because of its lower specific weight, the oxygen sinks, and that water becomes permanently lost. Although the atmosphere first warms up due to the greater amount of water vapor, some of this increase in heat is offset by the loss of water atoms at high altitudes.