The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
The amount of water on Earth is finite. Sustaining life, this precious resource has been circulating between Earth’s surface and atmosphere for over four billion years, and changing between a liquid, a solid and a gas along the way. Although the total amount of water within the cycle remains constant, the way it is split between its various reservoirs changes continually. Since the water cycle is a closed system, it should be possible to account for how much water moves in and out of Earth’s different water stores over time. Unfortunately, scientists cannot yet confidently account for where the water is, the ‘water budget’. A review led by scientists from ESA’s Climate Change Initiative and published recently in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society explores why.
Read full story: Accounting for Earth's water cycle