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Water covers nearly three-quarters of Earth's surface. But how much water lies hidden underground in the planet's crust ? A 2021 study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found that more of Earth's water is held underground in the soil or in pores in rock — known as groundwater — than in Earth's ice caps and glaciers. "There are approximately 43.9 million cubic kilometers [10.5 million cubic miles] of water in the Earth's crust," Grant Ferguson , a hydrogeologist at the University of Saskatchewan and lead author of the 2021 study, told Live Science. Related: How much water is in Earth's atmosphere? In comparison, ice in Antarctica holds about 6.5 million cubic miles (27 million cubic km) of water; in Greenland , about 720,000 cubic miles (3 million cubic km); and in glaciers outside of Antarctica and Greenland, 38,000 cubic miles (158,000 cubic km), the 2021 study noted. Earth's oceans remain the planet's largest reservoir of w...

A saltwater intrusion in the Mississippi River poses a threat to Louisiana's water supply. The river has low water levels due to drought conditions allowing an intrusion. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell has signed an emergency declaration over an intrusion of salt water into the Mississippi River that officials say could impact the water supply in the region. "We will continue to work with our partners locally and state-wide as we closely monitor this situation," Cantrell wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. Officials said weather forecasts indicate that river volume will fall to historic lows in the next several weeks. As a result, saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico is intruding upstream in Louisiana. "Plaquemines Parish has been affected by this issue since June. Drought conditions have only gotten worse since that time, which means additional communities along the Mississippi River could be impacted," Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said in a statemen...

The Red Planet is hiding an appealing secret. Scientists have discovered a world-historic discovery on Mars: “significant amounts of water ” are hiding inside the Red Planet’s Valles Marineris, its version of our grand canyon system, according to a recent press release from the European Space Agency (ESA). And up to 40% of material near the surface of the canyon could be water molecules. Mars’ Valles Marineris canyon system is hiding water The newly discovered volume of water is hiding under the surface of Mars, and was detected by the Trace Gas Orbiter, a mission in its first stage under the guidance of the ESA-Roscosmos project dubbed ExoMars. Signs of water were picked up by the orbiter’s Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector (FREND) instrument, which is designed to survey the Red Planet’s landscape and map the presence and concentration of hydrogen hiding in Mars’ soil. It works like this: while high-energy cosmic rays plunge into the surface, the soil emits neutro...