In the last couple of days I have heard much of the connection between water and energy. In the conference of the last post, Graeme Stephens, Director, Center for Climate Sciences of the Jet Propulsion Laboratories emphasized that climate change is really about changes to the planet’s water cycle. It involves warming and moisturing of the atmosphere caused by solar energy and holding in more solar energy. The water cycle circulates water in about 10 days. The atmosphere and ocean move heat from the equator to the pole. Water vapor is increasing, mostly in the tropics, and resulting in more rain. But drought is predicted in Africa, southern Europe, the US Southwest, and in Mexico. That is subtropical regions would get less rain, where it is already decreasing. In global warming calculations, the sun oscillates about 1 W/m^2, but this doesn’t explain the steady rise in temperature. We need more global measuring of precipitation and the water cycle, as well as more computing resources for better climate models.
Another connection is that most of our power plants need water cooling, and some of our power is hydro from rain converting into energy. On the Pacific rim, the cooling of the ocean water used in power plants brings with it the fact that the rim is also the home of earthquake faults from the Pacific plate subducting under or sliding on the islands and continents.
