2019-09-12 · All water on Earth
Almost none of Earth's water is a drink
The planet looks blue. Nearly all of that water is salt. Ice and groundwater take the next slices. One cell is every lake, river, cloud, and soil drop you might actually use.
USGS: put every drop in a sphere and it would be ~860 miles wide — smaller than you picture. This grid divides Earth's water (2019 snapshot) into colored bands — Oceans, Ice caps and glaciers, and 2 more groups — using equal squares so you compare shares, not country size on a map.
1 cell = 1.4 million km³ of Earth water (0.1% of Earth's water) · 1,000 cells
Context
The 2019 figures from USGS — How much water is there on Earth? put Oceans at 96.5% of Earth's water and Ice caps and glaciers at 1.7% — about $1 billion km³ of Earth water in this edition's rounding.
USGS Water Science School (2019), summarizing Gleick (1993) global water distribution.
Oceans ~96.5%, ice ~1.7%, groundwater ~1.7%, lakes/rivers/atmosphere/soil rounded into ~0.1% of cells.
USGS Water Science School (2019), summarizing Gleick (1993) global water distribution. Oceans ~96.5%, ice ~1.7%, groundwater ~1.7%, lakes/rivers/atmosphere/soil rounded into ~0.1% of cells. Total ~1.386 billion km³.
Share and export
Credit this grid as Inagrid — https://inagrid.com/e/2019-09-12-earth-water