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hydrosphere
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Diagram illustrating Earth's environmental spheres, with labeled sections showing the geosphere (land and crust), biosphere (living things), atmosphere (air), and hydrosphere (water), each extending vertically from the Earth's surface. Diagram of the water cycle showing processes like evaporation, condensation, precipitation, transpiration, infiltration, and groundwater flow between land, vegetation, surface water, and the ocean, with labeled arrows and color-coded soil moisture and groundwater zones.
The water cycle: From the ocean to the air
Mekong River Two Indigenous people paddle a small wooden boat on the wide, muddy Amazon River near Manaus, Brazil, under a dramatic cloudy sky with rainforest visible on the distant shore. Diagram showing seasonal water circulation in a dimictic lake. In summer, the lake is layered with epilimnion at the top, metalimnion in the middle, and hypolimnion at the bottom, with wind-driven circulation in the upper layer. In autumn and spring, the lake undergoes overturn, mixing water throughout. In winter, ice forms on the surface, with 0 degreesC near the top and 4 degreesC at the bottom, resulting in minimal circulation. Arrows indicate the direction of water movement in each season. A cross-sectional diagram of land shows the water table as the upper boundary of groundwater, with a stream and pond representing surface water where the water table meets the land surface. Unsaturated soil lies above the water table. Perito Moreno Glacier, Los Glaciares National Park Diagram of the surface hydrologic cycle showing water movement between oceans, atmosphere, land, lakes, rivers, ice, and groundwater, with arrows indicating evaporation, precipitation, vapor transport, and runoff. Volumes and fluxes are labeled in millions of cubic kilometers. A line graph shows how precipitation and evaporation vary by latitude, with peaks in precipitation near the equator and poles, and peaks in evaporation around 30 degrees north and south. Wind belts such as polar easterlies, westerlies, and trade winds are labeled across the top, illustrating their relationship to these patterns.
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hydrosphere summary
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water glass on white background. (drink; clear; clean water; liquid)
Water and its Varying Forms
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April Showers to March’s Lions and Lambs
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Diagram illustrating Earth's environmental spheres, with labeled sections showing the geosphere (land and crust), biosphere (living things), atmosphere (air), and hydrosphere (water), each extending vertically from the Earth's surface.
Earth's environmental spheres Earth's environment includes the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the lithosphere, and the biosphere.

hydrosphere

Earth science
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hydrosphere, discontinuous layer of water at or near Earth’s surface. It includes all liquid and frozen surface waters, groundwater held in soil and rock, and atmospheric water vapour.

Water is the most abundant substance at the surface of Earth. About 1.4 billion cubic km (326 million cubic miles) of water in liquid and frozen form make up the oceans, lakes, streams, glaciers, and groundwaters found there. It is this enormous volume of water, in its various manifestations, that forms the discontinuous layer, enclosing much of the terrestrial surface, known as the hydrosphere.

Diagram of the water cycle showing processes like evaporation, condensation, precipitation, transpiration, infiltration, and groundwater flow between land, vegetation, surface water, and the ocean, with labeled arrows and color-coded soil moisture and groundwater zones.
1 of 2
hydrologic cycleThis diagram shows how, in the hydrologic cycle, water is transferred between the land surface, the ocean, and the atmosphere.
The water cycle: From the ocean to the air
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The water cycle: From the ocean to the airOverview of water moving through the hydrologic cycle, or water cycle: it evaporates from Earth's surface as water vapor, which condenses in the atmosphere, forming clouds and precipitation, which falls to the land and flows through lakes, rivers, and oceans, from which water evaporates as the cycle repeats.
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Central to any discussion of the hydrosphere is the concept of the water cycle (or hydrologic cycle). This cycle consists of a group of reservoirs containing water, the processes by which water is transferred from one reservoir to another (or transformed from one state to another), and the rates of transfer associated with such processes. These transfer paths penetrate the entire hydrosphere, extending upward to about 15 km (9 miles) in Earth’s atmosphere and downward to depths on the order of 5 km (3 miles) in its crust.

This article examines the processes of the water cycle and discusses the way in which the various reservoirs of the hydrosphere are related through the water cycle. It also describes the biogeochemical properties of Earth’s waters at some length and considers the distribution of global water resources and their use and pollution by human society. Details concerning the major water environments that make up the hydrosphere are provided in the articles ocean, lake, river, and ice. See also climate for specific information about the impact of climatic factors on the water cycle. The principal concerns and methods of hydrology and its various allied disciplines are summarized in Earth sciences.

Distribution and quantity of Earth’s waters

Ocean waters and waters trapped in the pore spaces of sediments make up most of the present-day hydrosphere. The total mass of water in the oceans equals about 50 percent of the mass of sedimentary rocks now in existence and about 5 percent of the mass of Earth’s crust as a whole. Deep and shallow groundwaters constitute a small percentage of the total water locked in the pores of sedimentary rocks—on the order of 3 to 15 percent. The amount of water in the atmosphere at any one time is trivial, equivalent to roughly 13,000 cubic km (about 3,100 cubic miles) of liquid water, or about 0.001 percent of the total at Earth’s surface. This water, however, plays an important role in the water cycle.

water glass on white background. (drink; clear; clean water; liquid)
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Water and its Varying Forms
Water masses at Earth's surface
reservoir volume (in cubic kilometres) percent of total
*As liquid equivalent of water vapour.
**Total surpasses 100 percent because of upward rounding of individual reservoir volumes.
Source: Adapted from Igor Shiklomanov's chapter "World Fresh Water Resources" in Peter H. Gleick (ed.), Water in Crisis: A Guide to the World's Fresh Water Resources, copyright 1993, Oxford University Press, New York, N.Y. Table made available by the United States Geological Survey.
oceans 1,338,000,000 96.5
ice caps, glaciers, and permanent snow 24,064,000 1.74
ground ice and permafrost 300,000 0.22
groundwater (total) 23,400,000 1.69
groundwater (fresh) 10,530,000 0.76
groundwater (saline) 12,870,000 0.93
lakes (total) 176,400 0.013
lakes (fresh) 91,000 0.007
lakes (saline) 85,400 0.006
soil moisture 16,500 0.001
atmosphere* 12,900 0.001
swamp water 11,470 0.0008
rivers 2,120 0.0002
biota 1,120 0.0001
total** 1,409,560,910 101.67

At present, ice locks up a little more than 2 percent of Earth’s water and may have accounted for as much as 3 percent or more during the height of the glaciations of the Pleistocene Epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago). Although water storage in rivers, lakes, and the atmosphere is small, the rate of water circulation through the rain-river-ocean-atmosphere system is relatively rapid. The amount of water discharged each year into the oceans from the land is approximately equal to the total mass of water stored at any instant in rivers and lakes.

Soil moisture accounts for only 0.005 percent of the water at Earth’s surface. It is this small amount of water, however, that exerts the most direct influence on evaporation from soils. The biosphere, though primarily H2O in composition, contains very little of the total water at the terrestrial surface, only about 0.00004 percent, yet the biosphere plays a major role in the transport of water vapour back into the atmosphere by the process of transpiration.

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As will be seen in the next section, Earth’s waters are not pure H2O but contain dissolved and particulate materials. Thus, the masses of water at Earth’s surface are major receptacles of inorganic and organic substances, and water movement plays a dominant role in the transportation of these substances about the planet’s surface.