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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.
Water is a basic necessity of life. Since two thirds of the Earth is covered by water, the Earth is also called the blue planet and the watery planet. [notes 1] The hydrosphere plays an important role in the existence of the atmosphere in its present form. Oceans are important in this regard.
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 ...
Water resources are natural resources of water that are potentially useful for humans, for example as a source of drinking water supply or irrigation water. These resources can be either freshwater from natural sources, or water produced artificially from other sources, such as from reclaimed water or desalinated water (). 97% of the water on Earth is salt water and only three percent is fresh ...
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.
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 water cycle is powered from the energy emitted by the sun. This energy heats water in the ocean and seas. Water evaporates as water vapor into the air. Some ice and snow sublimates directly into water vapor. Evapotranspiration is water transpired from plants and evaporated from the soil. The water molecule H
Water is the most abundant substance on Earth's surface and also the third most abundant molecule in the universe, after H 2 and CO. [23] 0.23 ppm of the earth's mass is water and 97.39% of the global water volume of 1.38 × 10 9 km 3 is found in the oceans. [84]