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The global water cycle moves the same, fixed quantity of water between five reservoirs — ocean, atmosphere, ice, groundwater and surface water — forever. This simulator tracks each reservoir as a real numerical stock and computes every flux between them from driving physics each frame, so the total never drifts.
A 3D landscape — ocean, mountains with an ice cap, a forest, drifting clouds and an underground cross-section — where individual water-molecule particles are reassigned between reservoir arrays in exact proportion to the computed evaporation, condensation, precipitation, runoff, infiltration and baseflow fluxes.
Raise Global Temperature to watch saturation vapour pressure — and evaporation — climb via the Clausius–Clapeyron relation. Slide Vegetation Cover to shift the runoff/infiltration balance and transpiration rate. Adjust Simulation Speed to compress or stretch the reservoirs' very different residence times.
Each +1 °C of warming lets the atmosphere hold about 7% more moisture (Clausius–Clapeyron) — the same relation used to explain why a warmer climate produces heavier downpours even where average rainfall changes little.
| Reservoir | Typical residence time |
|---|---|
| Atmosphere (water vapour) | ≈ 9 days |
| Rivers / surface water | ≈ 2–6 months |
| Shallow groundwater | years to decades |
| Ocean & deep groundwater | centuries to millennia |
| Glacial ice | millennia |