Clarity on Precipitation Mechanism

Like all other natural events, precipitation also has its mechanisms. That implies, how does precipitation happen? How does the form of water come to the earth from the sky? It is so obvious that at first, the water gets evaporated, then the clouds get formed, after that, the cloud gets condensed and turns into water.

After getting condensed, it is not only water, but it can also be of the other state of water, which is ice. The precipitation mechanism includes the transformation of vapour into any type or any state of water. After preparing these molecules, these molecules come to the earth from the sky, known as precipitation.

Precipitation Mechanism

The process through which the water vapour, which has been transformed into clouds, gets transformed into different types of water molecules, such as big droplets, small droplets, ice, snow, etc., is known as the Precipitation mechanism.

This mechanism includes the whole process from water getting evaporated to becoming water again through precipitation. This mechanism itself describes the type of precipitation it will be. It also shows that the climate distribution of temperature and precipitation mechanism is somehow interrelated. 

Coalescence Mechanism

With the help of this mechanism, water droplets formed around nuclei at a temperature below the temperature of the point of dew. These nuclei or particles can be dust particles, salt particles, carbon dioxide, or any airborne particles that are non-water type. With the increasing amount of water that gets merged, the droplet starts falling toward the earth with an increasing velocity. When the diameter of the droplet of the water gets around 7 mm, the droplet breaks.

Now, these broken droplet pieces can form more droplets of water surrounding the nuclei. These breaking and growing of water droplets can be performed many times before reaching the earth’s ground. This number completely depends on the air conditioner in the atmosphere.

Cooling Mechanism

This is another precipitation mechanism in nature that causes the precipitation. This mechanism also helps the water molecules or molecules in any other state fall on the earth from the sky. In this mechanism, precipitation happens when the saturation capacity of the air exceeds the moisture amount. The water holding capacity of warm air is more than the same as cold air. Sometimes the warm air cooled suddenly. In these times, the warm air was saturated with more water, but when the moist air got cooled enough, some water became extra beyond the saturation point of the air.

This extra water now falls as precipitation on the earth. When air mass from a low elevation suddenly gets lifted to a higher elevation, this adiabatic cooling occurs. Along with this, when there is a border between the fronts of warm weather and cold weather, frontal cooling of air happens.

If warm air is blowing over a cold lake, then a sudden cooling can also happen. This is known as contact cooling. One more cooling of air can happen; this will be termed radiation cooling. When the air gets warm during the daytime, heat absorbs water to get saturated by evaporated water and gets cooled in the nighttime due to lack of enough heat. All of these types of cooling processes will lead the water to precipitation.

This type of precipitation is also known as the co-precipitation mechanism. It is not that all the types of cooling processes will be held all the time. Some processes might occur during some particular time of the year and in some particular region, and not all the processes are the ones that occur on every type of water shade.

These two are the exact type of precipitation mechanisms. All the types of precipitation happen due to either of the mechanisms only.

Conclusion

The precipitation mechanism is one of the most important topics for the discussion of precipitation. There might be only two types of mechanisms, but both are equally important to occur in precipitation in nature.

From vaporised water, the evaporated water becomes the water that falls on the earth from the sky, which completely has a different mechanism than other natural events. This is why these mechanisms have this much importance in the precipitation cycle.

These mechanisms help the water to get balanced in the earth and keep a natural level of different types of water.