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The total volume of water on Earth is estimated at 1.386 billion km 3 (333 million cubic miles), with 97.5% being salt water and 2.5% being freshwater. Of the freshwater, only 0.3% is in liquid form on the surface. [ 2 ][ 3 ][ 4 ] Because the oceans that cover roughly 70.8% of the area of Earth reflect blue light, Earth appears blue from space ...
Human-made surface water is water that can be continued by infrastructures that humans have assembled. This would be dammed artificial lakes, canals and artificial ponds (e.g. garden ponds) or swamps. [3] The surface water held by dams can be used for renewable energy in the form of hydropower. Hydropower is the forcing of surface water sourced ...
The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission is a satellite altimeter jointly developed and operated by NASA and CNES, the French space agency, in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and UK Space Agency (UKSA). [4] The objectives of the mission are to make the first global survey of the Earth's surface water, to observe ...
This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all of Earth's water is contained in its global ocean, covering 70.8% of Earth's crust. The remaining 29.2% of Earth's crust is land, most of which is located in the form of continental landmasses within Earth's land hemisphere.
During the most recent ice age (at its maximum about 20,000 years ago) the world's sea level was about 130 m lower than today, due to the large amount of sea water that had evaporated and been deposited as snow and ice, mostly in the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Most of this had melted by about 10,000 years ago.
This marker indicating sea level is situated between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth 's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datum – a standardised geodetic datum ...
The entire ocean, containing 97% of Earth's water, spans 70.8% of Earth's surface, [8] making it Earth's global ocean or world ocean. [23] [25] This makes Earth, along with its vibrant hydrosphere a "water world" [43] [44] or "ocean world", [45] [46] particularly in Earth's early history when the ocean is thought to have possibly covered Earth ...
The water cycle (or hydrologic cycle or hydrological cycle), is a biogeochemical cycle that involves the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth. The mass of water on Earth remains fairly constant over time.