Honest projection · estimated
Fresh Water Used Today (est.)
A projection of how much fresh water the world has drawn from its rivers, lakes and aquifers since midnight UTC, ticking at the most recent annual total spread evenly across the year. Humanity withdraws about 4,000 cubic kilometres a year — roughly 127,000 cubic metres every second — and around seven-tenths of it goes to farming, mostly to irrigate crops; industry and homes take the rest. It is a figure that has roughly quadrupled in a century, and where it presses hardest on a region’s supply is one tap away in Grid.
About this number
This is an honest projection, not a census. It is computed by carrying a published figure forward at a known rate over real elapsed time — ≈ 126,755 m³/sec (~70% for farming), from FAO AQUASTAT via World Bank (processed by Our World in Data, CC BY 4.0) — about 4,000 km³ of fresh water withdrawn worldwide each year, spread evenly across the year. The source is FAO AQUASTAT / World Bank (via Our World in Data). The true value is known only to within a margin; this is the running estimate, and we label it as one.