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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 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.
Earth's approximate water volume (the total water supply of the world) is 1.386 billion cubic kilometres (333 million cubic miles). [24] Liquid water is found in bodies of water, such as an ocean, sea, lake, river, stream, canal, pond, or puddle. The majority of water on Earth is seawater. Water is also present in the atmosphere in solid ...
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.
The deuterium to hydrogen ratio for ocean water on Earth is known very precisely to be (1.5576 ± 0.0005) × 10 −4. [35] This value represents a mixture of all of the sources that contributed to Earth's reservoirs, and is used to identify the source or sources of Earth's water.
The findings challenge the existing theory that the planet was completely covered by ocean four billion years ago.
Out of all the water on Earth, saline water in oceans, seas and saline groundwater make up about 97% of it. Only 2.5–2.75% is fresh water, including 1.75–2% frozen in glaciers, ice and snow, 0.5–0.75% as fresh groundwater and soil moisture, and less than 0.01% of it as surface water in lakes, swamps and rivers.
Fresh water can easily become polluted by human activities or due to naturally occurring processes, such as erosion. Fresh water makes up less than 3% of the world's water resources, and just 1% of that is readily available. About 70% of the world's freshwater reserves are frozen in Antarctica. Just 3% of it is extracted for human consumption.
This is a list of bodies of water by salinity that is limited to natural bodies of water that have a stable salinity above 0.05%, at or below which water is considered fresh. Water salinity often varies by location and season, particularly with hypersaline lakes in arid areas, so the salinity figures in the table below should be interpreted as ...