Accounting for Earth’s water

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.
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