I understand that for many decades large bodies of water around the world have gotten smaller or disappeared. But, where does that water go? Oceans? Atmosphere? Ground?
Thanks
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Atmosphere. Let’s take the aral sea for instance. The water was pumped to fields for crops where it both sank into the ground and evaporated. Once a body of water is small enough it starts to evaporate faster than it replenishes itself and eventually evaporates completely. So some water went to the ground but most evaporated and rained down somewhere else, likely over the ocean.
Climate change is making some regions warmer and drier, with more evaporation. But in other cases it’s actually increasing precipitation, creating a risk of floods. And eventually sea levels are expected to rise, especially if the ice in Antarctica reaches a point of collapse. So the water ultimately goes into the ocean, but can also hit parts of the land in the form of extreme precipitation.
If you look a the water distibution of eart at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_distribution_on_Earth#Distribution_of_saline_and_fresh_water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_distribution_on_Earth)
The oceans are 96.5% of all water.
Lakes are 0.013% of all water and close to an even split between the salt and freshwater lake. Of all lake water, the Caspian Sea contains 43% of it.
Rivers contain 0.00015% of all water. Swamps 0.00083%
Sall all of the larger body of water that has shrunken or disparaged only contained a minuscule part of the water on earth, to begin with. So a small percentage
Something like the melting of glaciers will have a large effect on the ocean that is because 1.74% of all water on earth is in the. That is 68.7% of all fresh water. All fresh groundwater on earth is another 30.1% of the freshwater. This makes up 98.1% of all fresh water on earth.
Could it be that those bodies of water you’re talking about are fresh, drinkable water?
That goes into the sea/gets used and contaminated by humans, so they don’t really disappear but change into undrinkable water. Which is actually a huge problem.
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