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Typically, fresh water is defined as water with a salinity of less than 1% that of the oceans – i.e. below around 0.35‰. Water with a salinity between this level and 1‰ is typically referred to as marginal water because it is marginal for many uses by humans and animals. The ratio of salt water to fresh water on Earth is around 50:1.
While the majority of Earth's surface is covered by oceans, those oceans make up just a small fraction of the mass of the planet. The mass of Earth's oceans is estimated to be 1.37 × 10 21 kg, which is 0.023% of the total mass of Earth, 6.0 × 10 24 kg.
Fresh water is the water resource that is of the most and immediate use to humans. Fresh water is not always potable water, that is, water safe to drink by humans. Much of the earth's fresh water (on the surface and groundwater) is to a substantial degree unsuitable for human consumption without treatment.
The findings challenge the existing theory that the planet was completely covered by ocean four billion years ago.
Water covers about 71% of the Earth's surface, with seas and oceans making up most of the water volume (about 96.5%). Small portions of water occur as groundwater (1.7%), in the glaciers and the ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland (1.7%), and in the air as vapor, clouds (consisting of ice and liquid water suspended in air), and precipitation ...
[196] [197] Most fresh water, about 68.7%, is present as ice in ice caps and glaciers. [198] The remaining 30% is ground water, 1% surface water (covering only 2.8% of Earth's land) [199] and other small forms of fresh water deposits such as permafrost, water vapor in the atmosphere, biological binding, etc. [200] [201]
The Earth captured in the Pacific Ocean side. The hydrosphere (from Ancient Greek ὕδωρ (húdōr) 'water' and σφαῖρα (sphaîra) 'sphere') [1] [2] is the combined mass of water found on, under, and above the surface of a planet, minor planet, or natural satellite.
Oceanic freshwater fluxes are defined as the transport of non saline water between the oceans and the other components of the Earth's system (the lands, the atmosphere and the cryosphere). These fluxes have an impact on the local ocean properties (on sea surface salinity , temperature and elevation ), as well as on the large scale circulation ...