Now that late spring/early summer is upon us, there’s increasingly more headlines about less rain in various places (recent floods notwithstanding). I’m assuming that’s because water is evaporating and not returning to those places, but where is it going?
Is it arriving, now, in these bursty flash floods? Is it staying longer in the atmosphere and moving to new locations? Is more of it just staying in the atmosphere period?
Well, for the most part, it’s just flowing into the ocean, like it always does. Evaporation over land is a very minor part of freshwater loss.