rain

Examples

• A1

  The rain started just as they were leaving the house — they had forgotten to check the weather forecast and hadn't brought umbrellas, so they had to run to the car and arrived slightly wet despite the short distance from the front door to the driveway.

• A1

  It rained all weekend, trapping the family indoors and forcing them to find creative ways to pass the time — they played board games, baked a cake together, watched movies, and sorted through old photographs, and by Sunday evening they had actually enjoyed the enforced domesticity.

• A2

  The rain fell steadily throughout the match and both teams struggled with the wet pitch and slippery ball — it wasn't a spectacle of beautiful football but it was a determined and physical contest that the home team eventually won with a goal from a corner kick in the second half.

• A2

  The rainy season brings welcome relief to the parched landscape after months of dry heat — rivers that had reduced to narrow trickles swell and rush, dormant seeds germinate, and the whole ecology responds to the sudden availability of water with an explosion of growth and activity.

• B1

  The hydrological cycle describes how water moves continuously between the atmosphere, land surface, and ocean: evaporation from ocean and land surfaces forms clouds; precipitation (primarily rain and snow) returns water to the surface; runoff collects in rivers and returns to the ocean; and groundwater percolates slowly through rock and soil; human activities are disrupting this cycle by changing land cover, abstracting groundwater faster than it recharges, and altering precipitation patterns through climate change.

• B1

  The distinction between weather and climate is important for understanding climate change: weather is the day-to-day state of the atmosphere (sunny today, rain tomorrow); climate is the long-term pattern of weather conditions over decades; a single cold winter or wet summer tells us nothing about climate trends, which only become visible when averaging over many years; but the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events (severe storms, prolonged droughts, heavy rainfall events) does provide evidence of changing climate conditions.

• B2

  The economics of flood management reveals a classic externality problem: development in floodplains is attractive because of low land prices and often good transport connectivity, but development increases impermeable surface area, reduces natural flood attenuation, and puts more people and property at risk; the costs of flooding are partly borne by third parties (other residents downstream, taxpayers who fund flood defences and disaster relief) rather than by developers, creating incentives for excessive floodplain development.

• B2

  Acid rain — precipitation with abnormally low pH caused by the dissolution of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides (primarily from coal combustion) in atmospheric water — was a major environmental issue in Europe and North America in the 1970s-90s, causing damage to forests, lakes, and buildings; targeted emission reduction policies (sulphur dioxide caps, catalytic converters) substantially reduced acid rain in these regions, representing one of the clearer environmental policy successes of the late twentieth century.