Earth
Water at planetary scale, read from orbit — and the reservoirs the photograph leaves out.
The Long Pause
In January 2025 a drill on the East Antarctic plateau reached bedrock at 2,800 metres and recovered ice formed more than a million years ago. It had not sat still: it had compacted, recrystallised and moved slowly with the ice sheet. What it had not done was return to the fast water cycle.
7 min read
The Visible Fraction
The largest fjord system on Earth was cut by one kind of water and filled by another. One of them holds most of the planet's fresh water; the other holds almost none of it. And much of the water people actually depend on is in neither of those visible reservoirs.
5 min read