Earth science
The same water has been moving through oceans, clouds, rivers, and living things for billions of years — evaporating, condensing, falling, and flowing back again. Explore it below as a living scene, a process loop, and real numbers about where Earth's water actually is.
Sunlight warms the ocean, water vapor rises and cools into clouds, and once a cloud holds enough moisture, it falls as rain that flows back downhill to the sea. Turn up the sun to speed things up.
Simplified for clarity — real evaporation, cloud formation, and rainfall depend on many more factors like humidity, wind, and pressure.
The same cycle, drawn as a schematic loop. Click a stage to see what's happening at that point.
Click any stage above to read about it.
Almost all of it is salt water sitting in the ocean. Fresh water — the kind we drink — is a sliver of the total, and most of that is locked in ice.
Approximate figures based on commonly cited USGS estimates.
Each stage moves water from one part of the planet to another.