Q: How much water is there on the Earth?
Sep. 13th, 2001 01:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
singularity75A: There's a whole lot of water on Earth! Something like 326,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons (326 million trillion gallons) of the stuff (roughly 1,260,000,000,000,000,000,000 liters) can be found on our planet. This water is in a constant cycle where it evaporates from the ocean, travels through the air, rains down on the land and then flows back to the ocean.
The reason there is so much water is because the oceans are huge. About 70% of the planet is covered in ocean, and the average depth of the ocean is several thousand feet (about 1,000 meters). 98% of the water on the planet is in the oceans of the world, and therefore is unusable for drinking because of the salt. About 2% of the planet's water is fresh, but 1.6% of the planet's water is locked up in the polar ice caps and glaciers. Another 0.36% is found underground in aquifers and wells. Only about 0.036% of the planet's total water supply is found in lakes and rivers! That's still thousands of trillions of gallons, but it's a very small amount compared to all the water available.
The reason there is so much water is because the oceans are huge. About 70% of the planet is covered in ocean, and the average depth of the ocean is several thousand feet (about 1,000 meters). 98% of the water on the planet is in the oceans of the world, and therefore is unusable for drinking because of the salt. About 2% of the planet's water is fresh, but 1.6% of the planet's water is locked up in the polar ice caps and glaciers. Another 0.36% is found underground in aquifers and wells. Only about 0.036% of the planet's total water supply is found in lakes and rivers! That's still thousands of trillions of gallons, but it's a very small amount compared to all the water available.
