Climate describes an aggregated view of regional or planetary temperature, air pressure, precipitation, and other meteorological conditions. In other words, climate describes the planet's generalized state-of-being. Heat exchange, precipitation, atmospheric chemistry and many other details all play a role in determining what regional or global climate conditions may be at any given time. But one thing's clear: water regulates the works. In various forms, water stores heat during the day and releases it at night. Tropical waters flow towards the poles, circulating heat around the planet. Ice crystals in the form of clouds reflects sunlight back into space. The images below portray different aspects of the planet's water cycle, broken into independent layers. Data used for many of the scenes shown here come from several computer models, including GEOS-5, and the ECCO General Circulation model.