The global water cylcle provides a simple example. Evaporation moves water from land, and from lakes, rivers, oceans, into the atmosphere. Precipitation moves water the other direction. Runoff moves water from terrestrial systems into the oceans. So evaporation is a way of moving energy from the surface into the atmosphere.
Some water is stored as ice in the polar ice caps and alpine glaciers.
This amount depends on climate. Global warming means less ice, and that extra water has to go somewhere. It will go into the oceans, resulting in a rise in sea level. The movement of water on land, and through the vegetation, is critical to the way other nutrient cylces work, because most of the other critical elements have a stage in which they occur in compounds that dissolve in water. This is by far where most of the carbon is, in the rocks.