Water
hideWater is a ubiquitous chemical substance, composed of hydrogen and oxygen, that is essential for the survival of many known forms of life. In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or state, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam. Water covers 71% of the Earth's surface. On Earth, it is found mostly in oceans and other large water bodies, with 1.6% of water below ground in aquifers and 0.001% in the air as vapor, clouds (formed of solid and liquid water particles suspended in air), and precipitation. Saltwater oceans hold 97% of surface water, glaciers and polar ice caps 2.4%, and other land surface water such as rivers, lakes and ponds 0.6%. A very small amount of the Earth's water is contained within biological bodies and manufactured products. Other water is trapped in ice caps, glaciers, aquifers, or in lakes, sometimes providing fresh water for life on land.
Water moves continually through a cycle of evaporation or transpiration (evapotranspiration), precipitation, and runoff, usually reaching the sea. Winds carry water vapor over land at the same rate as runoff into the sea. Over land, evaporation and transpiration contribute to the precipitation over land.
Clean, fresh drinking water is essential to human and other lifeforms. Access to safe drinking water has improved steadily and substantially over the last decades in almost every part of the world. There is a clear correlation between access to safe water and GDP per capita. However, some observers have estimated that by 2025 more than half of the world population will be facing water-based vulnerability. Water plays an important role in the world economy, as it functions as a solvent for a wide variety of chemical substances and facilitates industrial cooling and transportation. Approximately 70 percent of freshwater is consumed by agriculture.
For more information about Water, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
News tagged with water
Governments turn to cloud seeding to fight drought
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
14 hours ago |
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(AP) -- On a mountaintop clearing in the Sierra Nevada stands a tall metal platform holding a crude furnace and a box of silver iodide solution that some scientists believe could help offer relief from searing ...
Cassini closes in on the centuries-old mystery of Saturn's moon Iapetus
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
18 hours ago |
4.7 / 5 (3) |
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Extensive analyses and modeling of Cassini imaging and heat-mapping data have confirmed and extended previous ideas that migrating ice, triggered by infalling reddish dust that darkens and warms the surface, ...
Understanding ocean climate
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
19 hours ago |
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High-resolution computer simulations performed by scientists at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) are helping to understand the inflow of North Atlantic water to the Arctic Ocean and how ...
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Canna can: Ornamental eliminates pollutants from stormwater runoff
17 hours ago |
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Rapid population growth and urbanization have raised concerns over stormwater runoff contamination. Studies on watersheds indicate that excess nutrients, specifically nitrate-nitrogen and soluble reactive ...
The Meandering Channels of Mars
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
15 hours ago |
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Sinuous channels on the Martian surface may be evidence of relatively recent rainfall. Researchers plan to test this hypothesis by studying sinuous streams on Earth.
Staying Power: Senate Hearing Focuses On Energy Storage
14 hours ago |
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Thursday's Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing featured testimony from experts about the power industry's need to develop systems capable of storing large amounts of electricity if the nation's ...
Elusive 'hot' electrons captured in ultra-thin solar cells
56 minutes ago |
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Boston College researchers have observed the "hot electron" effect in a solar cell for the first time and successfully harvested the elusive charges using ultra-thin solar cells, opening a potential avenue to improved solar ...
Vermicompost from pig manure grows healthy hibiscus
14 hours ago |
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Vermicomposting, the practice of using earthworms to turn waste into nutrient-rich fertilizer, can be an economical, organic waste management practice. During vermicomposting, earthworms and microorganisms stabilize organic ...
Researchers learn why invasive plants are spreading rapidly in forests
16 hours ago |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Invasive plants are advancing into Eastern forests at an alarming rate, and the rapid spread has been linked by researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences to forest road ...
Farms, Fertilizers and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
17 hours ago |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists are front and center in finding out how farming affects emissions of the green house nitrous oxide (N2O).
Earth's atmosphere came from outer space, find scientists
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
18 hours ago |
4 / 5 (21) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The gases which formed the Earth's atmosphere - and probably its oceans - did not come from inside the Earth but from outer space, according to a study by University of Manchester and University ...
Climate projections underestimate CO2 impact
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
14 hours ago |
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The climate may be 30-50 percent more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide in the long term than previously thought, according to a recent study published in Nature Geoscience.
Sucking Up To Survive
15 hours ago |
5 / 5 (2) |
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Shrink a human being down to the size of an insect, and you would no longer be able to sip lemonade from a straw. The forces that hold liquid together would simply be too great to overcome at that tiny scale.
List of search results for water
