How much freshwater is there on Earth? Not as much as you’d think. Salty oceans make up nearly 97% of water on Earth while freshwater sources make up a mere 3%. Of that 3%, very little is the freshwater we see in lakes and rivers. In fact, most of Earth’s freshwater is frozen in the polar regions.

99% of Earth’s freshwater ice and 68% of Earth’s total freshwater is stored in the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets. Antarctica alone harbors 90% of the world’s ice and 60% of the world’s total freshwater. That shouldn’t be a surprise, though, because the Antarctic Ice Sheet is nearly 14 million square kilometers (5.4 million square miles), which is roughly the combined size of the United States and Mexico.

But, if 68% of Earth’s freshwater is stored in ice sheets, where is the rest of it? Well, 30% of it is groundwater. The other 1.2% is surface water. That’s all the water from lakes and rivers, right? No, not even close. 69% of that is ground ice and permafrost. 20.9% is in lakes, 3.8% is soil moisture, 3% is water in the atmosphere, 2.6% is in swamps, 0.49% is in rivers, and 0.26% is in living things. (Don’t ask me how scientists estimated these numbers.)

Compared to rivers, lakes take up the lion’s share of surface water. The African Great Lakes, Lake Baikal, and the North American Great Lakes are the three largest lake systems on Earth. The African Great Lakes alone contain over 31,000 km³ (7,400 cu mi) of water, which is 25% of Earth’s unfrozen surface freshwater. These lakes are also incredibly biodiverse and are home to 10% of the world’s fish species.

Meanwhile, Lake Baikal is the world’s deepest freshwater lake and the largest freshwater lake by volume. Reaching a depth of 1,642 metres (5,387 feet) and containing 23,615 km³ (5,670 cu mi) of water, it accounts for 22 to 23% of Earth’s surface freshwater. What’s crazy is that Lake Baikal contains more water than all of the North American Great Lakes combined, and it’s more than 3 times the depth of Lake Superior, the largest of the North American Great Lakes. That said, Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area.

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