Lake Baikal is recognized as the world's largest freshwater lake, with a storage capacity of 23.6 trillion cubic meters, accounting for just over 20% of the planet's total freshwater.
Although the water storage capacity of Lake Baikal is already very high, on the other side of the world, there are five conjoined lakes that are not inferior to Baikal, that is, the five major lakes in North America, which have almost the same water storage as Baikal and nearly eight times the area of Baikal.
We all know that the lake area of Lake Baikal is 31,500 square kilometers, which is a proper giant if you put it on the mainland, but compared to the Great Lakes of North America, it is obviously not enough.
The area of the Great Lakes of North America has reached an astonishing 245,000 square kilometers, which is 7.8 times that of Lake Baikal, and it is also the largest freshwater lake in the world, and it is 80 times that of Poyang Lake, the largest freshwater lake in the mainland.
Of course, some people say that the Great Lakes of North America are made up of the Great Lakes, which is a bit better than the others, but even if the five Great Lakes of North America are counted separately, the single lake in North America is still the best among them.
The so-called Great Lakes of North America are composed of five freshwater lakes, namely Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, of which the smallest Lake Ontario is 19,500 square kilometers, nearly 9 times the size of Lake Taihu on the mainland.
Lake Superior is the largest of the Great Lakes and the largest freshwater lake in the world, with a total area of 82,400 square kilometers, equivalent to the area of nearly 35 Taihu lakes, and the freshwater resources of Lake Superior are also very amazing, with a staggering 12 trillion cubic meters of water storage, more than 2,700 times the size of Taihu Lake, and it takes 13 years for the Yangtze River to fill it.
Among the Great Lakes, there are two lakes of more than 50,000 square kilometers, namely Lake Huron (59,600 square kilometers), Lake Michigan (58,100 square kilometers), and Lake Erie (25,700 square kilometers).
And the most enviable point of the five major lakes in North America is that their perennial lake water reserves are very stable, whether it is the flood season or the dry season, the water storage is rarely large, unlike the five major freshwater lakes in the mainland, which are all seasonal lakes, and the water storage in the flood season is still sufficient, and when the dry season comes, the lake water often dries up.
According to statistics, the current surface freshwater reserves of the continent are about 2.8 trillion cubic meters, and any lake in the Great Lakes can basically reach this water storage, of which the water storage of only one Lake Superior is more than 4 times the total freshwater reserves of the continent, and the water storage of the Great Lakes in North America is at least 8 times that of the continental surface freshwater reserves.
It is no wonder that various media have been reporting that China is a country with a relatively lack of fresh water resources, and it is indeed too big to compare with others to save water, and this gap is difficult to make up through water conservation.
Originally, I thought that Lake Baikal was invincible in the world, but I didn't expect that the Great Lakes of North America could actually resist Lake Baikal, and they were far ahead in terms of area.