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Water

• Your body – including bones, organs, skin, hair and nails – is about three quarters water.
  
  
• At present, there are about 6 billion people on our planet. Estimates indicate that by 2050, that amount will increase to 9 billion. This means that water demand will rise, especially in cities. Today, slightly more than half of the world’s population (about 3.2 billion) lives in cities. Estimates indicate that by 2030, that amount will increase to about three quarters.
  
  
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the global average sea level will rise between 0.18 and 0.59 metres by the end of this century. Therefore, flooding will threaten many coastal cities.
  
  
• If all the ice in the Antarctic would melt, the world’s oceans would rise by nearly 67 metres (220 feet), or the height of a 20-story building. But this would take a very long time!
  
  
• Every minute of the day, the Earth receives about 900 million tonnes of rainfall.
  
  
• A tap that leaks one drop of water per second wastes more than 25 litres of water a day or more than 9 000 litres a year!
  
  
• Réunion, a small island located in the Indian Ocean, holds the record for receiving the most rain in a week’s time. It was set in February 2007 when a powerful storm poured more than 5 metres of rain on the island.
  

• Hydrology” is the scientific study of the properties, distribution and effects of water on Earth’s surface.
  
  
• The lowest recorded rainfall in the world is in Arica, northern Chile (South America). Arica is one of the driest places on Earth, where on average less than 1 millimetre of rain falls every year. A coffee cup would take about 100 years to fill!
  
  
• The heaviest annual rainfall in the world was recorded at Cherrapunji, India, where 26 470 millimetres (26½ metres!) of rain fell between August 1860 and July 1861.
  
  
• Very heavy rainfall in a 24-hour period was recorded in the Réunion, located in the Indian Ocean, where 1 825 millimetres of rain fell between 7 and 8 January 1966.
  
  
• There are major deserts across the planet, as well as countless smaller areas that qualify as deserts. Major deserts include the Sahara, the Gobi, the Mojave, the Sonoran, the Chihuahuan, the Kalahari, the Namib, the Karakum, the Great Sandy Desert and the Takla Makan.
  
  

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