‘Concerning change’ to Earth’s water cycle will ‘turbocharge rainstorms and make water saltier’, experts claim

"This higher amount of water circulating in the atmosphere could also explain the increase in rainfall that is being detected in some polar areas, where the fact that it is raining instead of snowing is speeding up the melting," lead study author Estrella Olmedo, who is a mathematician at Barcelona's Institute of Marine Sciences, said.

The researchers explained that about 85 percent of evaporation and 77 percent of precipitation occurs over the ocean.

"Both processes produce changes in sea surface salinity (SSS) leading to positive (evaporation) and negative (precipitation) anomalies," the study read.

Study co-author Antonio Turiel from the Institut de Ciències del Mar in Spain added that the atmosphere and the ocean "interact in a stronger way than we imagined, with important consequences for the continental and polar areas".

The researchers found that for every degree Celsius the Earth warms due to climate change, Earth's water cycle could amplify by up to 7 percent.

Scientists used both satellite imagery and buoy measurements to gather and corroborate their data.

In the future, the authors recommend that ocean models include satellite salinity data to help determine global changes in evaporation and precipitation.