Water regulates climate, storing heat during the day and releasing it at night. Water in the ocean and atmosphere carry heat from the tropics to the poles. The process by which water moves around the earth, from the ocean, to the atmosphere, to the land and back to the ocean is called the water cycle. The animations below each portray a component of the water cycle. All use an identical view and camera motion to allow for easy compositing.
Data for the animation of global sea surface temperature was derived from a model run of ECCO's Ocean General Circulation Model. See http://www.ecco-group.org/model.htm for more information on ECCO.

Data for the animation of atmospheric phenomena was created using data from the GEOS-5 atmospheric model on the cubed-sphere, run at 14-km global resolution for 25-days. Variables animated here include evaporation, water vapor and precipitation. For more information on the GEOS-5 see http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/systems/geos5 . For more information on the cubed-sphere work see http://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/610.3/cubedsphere.html. All three of these animations are time synchronous throughout the animation to allow cross fades during compositing.

The final animation shown here, a pulsing network of rivers over the continents, represents the flow of water from land back into the ocean, thereby completing the water cycle.