The cycle of processes by which water circulates between the earth's oceans, atmosphere, and land, involving precipitation as rain and snow, drainage in streams and rivers, and return to the atmosphere by evaporation and transpiration.
Rain
Moisture condensed from the atmosphere that falls visibly in separate drops.
Snow
Atmospheric water vapor frozen into ice crystals and falling in light white flakes or lying on the ground as a white layer.
Hail
Pellets of frozen rain that fall in showers from cumulonimbus clouds.
The process by which moisture is carried through plants from roots to small pores on the underside of leaves, where it changes to vapor and is released to the atmosphere.
The process of a substance in a liquid state changing to a gaseous state due to an increase in temperature and/or pressure.
The change of the physical state of matter from gas phase into liquid phase, and is the reverse of vapourisation.