how percentage of water in earth
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Where is Earth’s Water?
“Water, Water, Everywhere….”
You’ve heard the phrase, and for water, it really is true. Earth’s water is (almost) everywhere: above the Earth in the air and clouds, on the surface of the Earth in rivers, oceans, ice, plants, in living organisms, and inside the Earth in the top few miles of the ground.
For an estimated explanation of where Earth’s water exists, look at this bar chart.If you check back in a million years, no doubt these numbers will be different!
- Left bar: All water, freshwater and saline, on, in, and above the Earth.
- Center bar: All freshwater
- Right bar: Only the portion of freshwater residing in surface water (rivers and lakes, etc), snow and ice, and relatively-shallow ground water.
Here is a bar chart showing where all water on, in, and above the Earth exists. The left-side bar chart shows how almost all of Earth’s water is saline and is found in the oceans.
Where is all of the Earth’s water?
The ocean holds about 97 percent of the Earth’s water; .
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there are over 332,519,000 cubic miles of water on the planet. A cubic mile is the volume of a cube measuring one mile on each side. Of this vast volume of water, NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center estimates that 321,003,271 cubic miles is in the ocean.
TEACHING STRATEGY FOR GRADES K-3 Part A – Exploring the Globe 1. Look at the globe with the students. See if they can find where they live on the globe. Have them point out lakes, rivers, and oceans. 2. Ask the students if they know which kinds of waterbodies are salt water and which are freshwater. Have they ever tasted salt water? Was it good? 3. Ask the students if they think there is more water or land on the globe.
Is there water beneath the surface of the ground that we cannot see on the globe?
BACKGROUND INFORMATION Because water covers three-quarters of the earth’s surface, it might appear that there is plenty to go around and that we will never run out of this valuable resource. In reality, however, we have a limited amount of usable fresh water. Over 97 percent of the earth’s water is found in the oceans as salt water. Two percent of the earth’s water is stored as fresh water in glaciers, ice caps, and snowy mountain ranges.
That leaves only one percent of the earth’s water available to us for our daily water supply needs. Our fresh water supplies are stored either in the soil (aquifers) or bedrock fractures beneath the ground (ground water) or in lakes, rivers, and streams on the earth’s surface (surface water). We use fresh water for a variety of purposes. Agricultural uses represent the largest consumer of fresh water, about 42 percent. Approximately 39 percent of our fresh water is used for the production of electricity; 11 percent is used in urban and rural homes, ➤offices, and hotels; and the remaining 8 percent is used in manufacturing and mining activities.
How much water is in the ocean?
About 97 percent of Earth’s water is in the ocean.
It’s hard to imagine, but about 97 percent of the Earth’s water can be found in our ocean. Of the tiny percentage that’s not in the ocean, about two percent is frozen up in glaciers and ice caps. Less than one percent of all the water on Earth is fresh. A tiny fraction of water exists as water vapor in our atmosphere.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there are over 332,519,000 cubic miles of water on the planet. A cubic mile is the volume of a cube measuring one mile on each side. Of this vast volume of water, NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center estimates that 321,003,271 cubic miles is in the ocean.
That’s enough water to fill about 352,670,000,000,000,000,000 gallon-sized milk containers!
Water distribution on Earth
Most water in Earth’s atmosphere and crust comes from saline seawater, while fresh water accounts for nearly 1% of the total. The vast bulk of the water on Earth is saline or salt water, with an average salinity of 35‰ (or 4.5%, roughly equivalent to 34 grams of salts in 1 kg of seawater), though this varies slightly according to the amount of runoff received from surrounding land. In all, water from oceans and marginal seas, saline groundwater and water from saline closed lakes amount to over 97% of the water on Earth, though no closed lake stores a globally significant amount of water.
Distribution of saline and fresh water
The total volume of water on Earth is estimated at 1.386 billion km³ (333 million cubic miles), with 97.5% being salt water and 2.5% being fresh water. Of the fresh water, only 0.3% is in liquid form on the surface.
Because the oceans that cover roughly 71% of the area of Earth reflect blue light, Earth appears blue from space, and is often referred to as the blue planet and the Pale Blue Dot.
Groundwater
Fresh groundwater is of great value, especially in arid countries such as India. Its distribution is broadly similar to that of surface river water, but it is easier to store in hot and dry climates because groundwater storages are much more shielded from evaporation than are dams. In countries such as Yemen, groundwater from erratic rainfall during the rainy season is the major source of irrigation water.
