You probably realize that there’s a whole lot of water in our oceans, but if you add in all of other bodies of water, not to mention what’s floating around in our atmosphere and up in the clouds, well, that number is probably bigger than any of us can imagine.
What is it exactly?
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326 million trillion gallons, or 1,260,000,000,000,000,000,000 liters.
Yeah. That’s obviously A LOT.
The oceans, of course, make up the vast amount of that number. They cover around 70% of the planet, with their average depth being 12,100 feet (3,688 meters). 98% of the water on the planet exists in the oceans, which makes it unusable as far as irrigation and drinking.
Less than 3% of the water on the planet is fresh, and 1.6% of that is frozen in glaciers and in the polar ice caps. Another 0.36% if underground, which means we’re left with only 0.036% of fresh water that’s available aboveground for us to all share.
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That’s still thousands of trillions of gallons of water, mostly found in lakes and rivers.
The earth contains around 117 million lakes – about 4% of the world’s land. The United States alone is home to 1681 lakes.
The rest of our water is floating in the air or is locked up in plants and animals (including your body, which is 65% water), and sitting in our fridges.
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Now you know a little bit more about our world’s water, salt and fresh.
And it probably seems a whole lot more obvious why we need to protect the fresh water that we have, don’t you think?
Let us know in the comments!
