amount of water on the earth
The earth is characterized by having 3/4 of its surface covered by water. Terrestrial water exists on the earth in the atmosphere as water vapor, in the oceans as liquid water ,as ice in glaciers and polar ice caps. It flows in rivers, streams and lakes and under the surface of the earth as ground water. As a result, the vast bulk of the water on Earth is regarded as saline or salt water, with an average salinity of 35‰ (or 3.5%, 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. Front and back of the earth. The blue area represents water. As oceans are very wide and there are multiple to be found on earth, oceans store most of the earth's water. This is apparently 97% of the total amount of water on earth, 2% of which is frozen. Of all the water on earth, which is 97,14% of the total amount of surface water, only 2,59% is freshwater. Of this 2,59% another percentage is trapped in ice caps and glaciers, which is about 2%. Distribution of saline and fresh water[edit] 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. If you thinking of water not leaving earth's atmosphere it's always constant. But the amount of water present on earth in three form solid(Ice), liquid(water), gas(water vapour) is not constant always changing due to different environmental factors like in last ice-age most of the water was in solid(ice) form. Written Apr 12, 2015 · View Upvotes. Sandeep K Rout, Physicist. This finding can be used to show that back in time there was more water on Earth than today. Although water covers 70 percent of the Earth's surface, water is actually a rare substance that represents just 0.05 percent of the Earth's total mass. Water has nevertheless played a crucial role in the emergence of life on Earth. Without water, the Earth would in all likelihood be a dead planet. The amount of water on the planet has not always been the same, however. A research group at the Natural History Museum of Denmark has discovered this by measuring how hydrogen isotope ratios in the oceans have changed over time. 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. Saline groundwater is seldom considered except when evaluating water quality in arid regions. The water distribution on earth shows that most water in the Earth's atmosphere and crust comes from the world ocean's saline seawater, while freshwater accounts for only 2.5% of the total. The ocean holds 97 percent of the Earth's water; the remaining three percent is freshwater found in glaciers and ice, below the ground, or in rivers and lakes. Of the world's total water supply of about 326 million cubic miles of water, over 96 percent is saline, found in the ocean. Written Aug 26. • Asked to answer by. This finding can be used to show that back in time there was more water on Earth than today. (Photo:Colourbox) Although water covers 70 percent of the Earth's surface, water is actually a rare substance that represents just 0.05 percent of the Earth's total mass. Water has nevertheless played a crucial role in the emergence of life on Earth.
1.386 billion km³ (333 million cubic miles)