Global water volumes. Illustration of Earth with three spheres of water over North America. The larger sphere represents the volume of all the water on, in and above the Earth (1,408.71 millions of cubic kilometres). The mid-sized sphere represents the volume of total liquid freshwater, that is water from rivers, lakes and shallow ground water (4.3917 millions of cubic kilometres). The smallest sphere represents the volume of freshwater rivers, lakes and soil moisture (0.1917 millions of cubic kilometres). The vertical scale of the map has been exaggerated by a factor of one.