Expert: Donald Rosenfeld - 5/4/2006

Question
Well i dont know if i am in the right catagory but my question is, is the world losing water?
i got in this huge arguement these people said that one day man will use all the water on the earth. well common sence tells me that inless there is a hole in the earth where all the water is exscaping into space. that we should have the same amount of water today as we did thousands of years ago in some form or another ie water vapor, in the human body, soda, everything that has water as an ingreidient but the water is still on the the earth right?

Answer
Hi Adam

Basically the water system of Earth is a closed loop: rain falls then evaporates and goes back into the atmosphere; for more, see:

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/hyd/home.rxml

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/hyd/bdgt.rxml

http://www.mhhe.com/earthsci/geology/mcconnell/demo/hycycle.htm