12 ms·
List of rivers by discharge
- unwind 4y agoI love how the page gives an actual value to the volume of an Olympic-size swimming pool: 2,500 cubic meters! That goes straight into long-term memory, for me. I hope ... my memory sometimes feels differently.
- cinntaile 4y agoSomething to be aware of. The length and the width are standardized, but the depth is not (it needs to be at least 2m deep) so it's not a very accurate number. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic-size_swimming_pool#Specifications https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic-size_swimming_pool#S...
- Someone 4y agoFor me, that’s a derived value. An Olympic pool is 50m long, about half that wide (ten lanes; 8 for the swimmers plus one each near each edge for fairness (the waves would be very bad for swimmers swimming alongside the edge)) and about 2m deep. Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic-size_swimming_pool#Specifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic-size_swimming_pool#Spe..., it’s slightly over 50m long (to allow for the mounting of touch panels), exactly 25m wide and at least 2m deep, so 2500m³ is a lower limit, and there is no theoretical upper limit.
- checkyoursudo 4y ago> and there is no theoretical upper limit. I would like an infinitely deep pool, please!
- ithinkso 4y agoThat might not be enough as in the case of Gabriel's horn [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel%27s_horn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel%27s_horn
- tecleandor 4y agoThe always handy "Olympic pools", "Libraries of Congress" and "Football fields" (at least in Europe).
- viciousvoxel 4y agoIn the USA we use football fields too, but they're US Standard (aka American) football fields (120 yards).
- mcalus3 4y agoIt was sarcasm, no one uses anything like that outside of the US. Using football fields as a measure of distance is as "stupid american" meme around the world.
- walthamstow 4y agoMost of the rest of the world assumes a soccer pitch when an American says a football field. They are basically the same length, so what exactly is your problem with using them as a marker for distance? We Brits have our own markers, e.g. the area of Wales or the volume of a double decker bus. They don't translate that easily either.
- smcl 4y agoInterestingly the area of a football pitch has a pretty huge degree of tolerance - between 45-90m wide and 90-120m long - and iirc while they can be nearly square, they aren't allowed to be exactly square (i.e. you can't have a 90x90m pitch, but 90x91m is ok ... if a little unusual). At some point I believe the home team would adjust the width/length according to opponents' preferred tactics, but idk if that happens anymore.
- walthamstow 4y agoThere is no regulation football pitch in the world that is 45m wide. Where did you get this? UEFA regulations are tightly controlled. The pitch must be 100-105m long and 64-68m wide. FIFA have a wider tolerance (100-110m long) but that's probably because FIFA tournaments don't have home and away teams, whereas UEFA do.
- nullandvoid 4y agoVery cool. Now looking out into the distance imagining 100 olympic size swimming pools stacked end to end, being re-filled every second (flow of amazon), crazy.
- resist_futility 4y agoHad to look up the Colorado river because it wasn't big enough to even make the list, it's 37th in US alone. Wow, so many people rely on such a small river.
- sulam 4y agoSo much of the Colorado’s water is taken, this is highly influenced by where they measure.
- oblio 4y agoThe reasonable place to measure is somewhere near the river's mouth.
- FredPret 4y agoWhat if all the water has been siphoned off by then? We could measure actual flow at the mouth, and theoretical "untouched" flow if no water was diverted or dammed
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- snowwrestler 4y agoThat would be tough for the Colorado; it’s my understanding that so much water gets taken out upstream that all that remains is a trickle in the Mexican desert that sometimes evaporates completely before reaching the sea.
- ijidak 4y agoI thought the same thing. I live in Vegas. Not very comforting. I expected the Colorado to be in the top 50. Shocked it's not even in the list!
- meindnoch 4y agoCrazy how the Amazon is 5x larger than the second largest.
- The_Colonel 4y agoIt's also ~100 times bigger than the Nile, which is of comparable length.
- Jensson 4y agoThe Nile has half the drainage area, but only 1% of the water flow. Really mind boggling how much difference the weather makes.
- InitialLastName 4y agoI wonder what the breakdown in sources for the disparity is. I can think of three potential differences, that are all likely contributors: - Rainfall levels in the drainage area - Evaporation over the course of the river - Diversion for human use I have to think the third is a substantial factor with the Nile vs the Amazon, considering that the Nile is essentially the only water source for two high-population countries (agriculture in Brazil is ostensibly supported by rainfall as well as by the river).
- adamgordonbell 4y agoAlso, in the top 7, is it and two of its tributaries. That's 3 of the top 7. Another one is in 14th. I guess tributaries mean its double counting the same water, but still.
- cm2187 4y agoIt is several km wide. What is remarkable is that it is very calm with a slow and steady current.
- EL_Loco 4y agoDuring wet season its widest point can reach 30 miles. This means that if you're on a boat in the middle of the river, you can't see nothing but water in any direction. To cross it on foot, over some imaginary bridge, would take you over 8 hours.
- theurerjohn3 4y agoI feel its worth asking questions about the talk page. Specifically: > Most of the data in this article is sourced from somebody calling himself Intergalactic Power and Light. Some random guy's personal web page does not constitute a reliable source. Dricherby (talk) 18:24, 2 September 2009 (UTC) The link is unfortunately broken, but if anyone has more details that would be fascinating.
- scanny 4y agoLast valid Web Archive capture was on August 5th 2011: https://web.archive.org/web/20110805041437/http://home.comcast.net/~igpl/Rivers.html https://web.archive.org/web/20110805041437/http://home.comca... "Page created 2003-08-23 and last revised 2005-07-31." Page also has no sources of its own.
- aaron695 4y agoChecking Mekong (Which I would have thought higher) it's correct by this source - https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/b3463307-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/b3463307-en https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/b3463307-en/index.html?i... Annual - 475 km3 - 475*1000*1000*1000/365/24/3600 = 15062 m3/s Any others seem odd?
- theurerjohn3 4y agooh the talk page comment is old enough that I assume its mostly been fixed, although the Urubamba-Caura length discrepancy noted by someone else on the talk page is still there. I was commenting more at the fascination of 'Intergalactic Power and Light' maintaining for a while a webpage focused on river lengths. It feels like a callback to an earlier era
- helsinkiandrew 4y agoThe individual pages for each of the rivers (or atleast the first three I tried) have the discharges with different seemingly more trustworthy sources, if anyone wants to edit the page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_River https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_River
- jeffrallen 4y agoWolfram Alpha says that the Hay River is way way bigger than the Amazon. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay_River_(Canada) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hay_River_(Canada)
- brohee 4y agoOh my, that dataset is badly poisoned https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=hay+river+average+discharge https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=hay+river+average+disch... gives 3.63 billion m3/s. If I'm not mistaken that's would be one Lake Huron (https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=lake+huron+volume https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=lake+huron+volume) each second
- ijidak 4y agoWow. The mighty Mississippi is only number 13. Scary that the Colorado, which 40 million people rely on, doesn't even make the list. Shows how water starved the American southwest really is.
- wiredfool 4y agoWell, there's basically 0 outflow from the Colorado these days.
- phkahler 4y agoBecause of the 40 million people.
- Pephers 4y agoTry to follow the Colorado River downstream of Lake Mead on Google Maps with satellite imagery turned on. It's quite interesting to see how much water is diverted away from it, primarily for irrigation.
- rendall 4y agoI am surprised that the Nile is only at 105th, far below even the Danube and the Volga. It holds such prominence in Western history that I naively expected it to be in the top 5.
- teruakohatu 4y agoI am also surprised. This might be because the river is highly seasonal, and it is a source of significant irrigation, so its discharge into the Mediterranean is limited.
- arethuza 4y agoI remember taking a flight from Nairobi to Luxor which flew along the Nile for a long long way... It doesn't really surprise me - it is flowing through vast deserts for an awfully long distance.
- HPsquared 4y agoThe Nile is pretty significant for Egyptians, that's for sure: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nile_River_and_delta_from_orbit.jpg https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nile_River_and_del...
- csomar 4y agoMy understanding is that discharge is what's left once the river reaches the sea. I am actually surprised that there is anything left, and I don't think there will be in the future. (both from Egypt and Ethiopia leveraging the river more for their needs).
- redwood 4y agoLittle known fact, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra converge into the same river delta... Bengal
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoIf i create a canal from a ocean into a basin.. does that count as river? https://en-ph.topographic-map.com/map-hjk1tp/Sahara/?center=29.4396%2C26.53748&zoom=7 https://en-ph.topographic-map.com/map-hjk1tp/Sahara/?center=...
- Retric 4y agoTechnically, I think that would be a breachway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breachway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breachway Though in the short term your making a flood, longer term flow rates should depend on the tides.
- jefftk 4y agoMore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project
- bjornsing 4y agoI’m a bit surprised to find the Nile at row 105. I thought it would be on the top 10. EDIT: I see @rendall had the exact same thought an hour before me. :)
- Quarrel 4y agoGotta love Australia. No rivers make the cut. Our longest & largest drainage basin river, the Murray, doesn't remotely come close to making this list. It'd need to have about 3x its flow rate to come 150th.
- screye 4y agoIt is to be expected. No intersecting tectonic plates with landmass = no mountains = no rivers. The biggest rivers come from mountain ranges that sit on huge inter-continental plates. large Indian and Chinese rivers come from the Himalayas on the Indian plate. The south American rivers from the Andes and the South American plate; and the Congo from the tall-great-lakes that sit on the African plate.
- scythe 4y agoGeologically, New Guinea is part of Australia (the continent), being part of a contiguous section of continental crust. New Zealand, however, is not, forming instead its own "microcontinent" (sometimes Zealandia). A couple of rivers in NG do in fact make the list. But Australians don't generally realize they sit on the same ground as Papuans.
- Quarrel 4y ago> But Australians don't generally realize they sit on the same ground as Papuans. What? Of course we do. We're the colonial power even, you think we haven't noticed them?
- FpUser 4y agoFor a good chunk of my life I lived on a shore of #10 of the list - Yenisei river [0] and had pleasure traveling down its length on a boat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yenisey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yenisey
- photochemsyn 4y agoThis oversimplifies a complex issue. What about seasonal variation? The Amazon varies in flow rate by a factor of 1-2, other rivers vary by a factor of 20, between the months of greatest and least flow. Yearly variation also exists: https://www.encyclopedie-environnement.org/en/water/hydrometry-measuring-flow-river-why-how/ https://www.encyclopedie-environnement.org/en/water/hydromet...
- giraffe_lady 4y agoWell according to this the amazon is an order of magnitude more than the next highest so for that specific one it may not matter all that much.
- knodi123 4y agoyeah, but is the amazon as big as the next 6 combined (as the wiki suggests), or is it some smaller or larger multiple?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago>Other scholars[who?] claim that the name is derived from the Tupi word amassona, meaning "boat destroyer". Regardless of which etymology is correct, I hadn't seen this explanation before and think it's wonderful, as long as I'm not in that boat. For anyone who is interested in rivers in general, you owe it to yourself to take a look at Robert Szucs' wonderfully colorful maps of river basins around the world. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/maps-art-gis-geography-robert-szucs https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/maps-art-gis-geography...
- petesergeant 4y ago> During the dry season its main channel averages 2 to 6 miles (3.2 to 9.6 km) in width, but in the wet season can reach an astonishing 30 miles (48.3 km) wide. To put that figure into perspective, if you could walk across the river it would take you about 8 hours to get from one side to the other! Its mouth is even wider, at an incredulous 235 miles (380 km) https://www.rainforestcruises.com/guides/amazon-river-facts https://www.rainforestcruises.com/guides/amazon-river-facts
- kubectl_h 4y agoThe St. Lawrence river is massive. The total watershed is larger than the Hudson , Connecticut, Merrimack and four largest rivers of Maine combined. Unrelated, but the Robert-Bourossa dam spillway can discharge water at a rate similar to the capacity of the St. Lawrence as it flows near Quebec City. https://www.amusingplanet.com/2014/09/the-colossal-stepped-spillway-of-robert.html https://www.amusingplanet.com/2014/09/the-colossal-stepped-s...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- itslennysfault 4y agoIt really is impressive. Knowing that made seeing that the Amazon has approx 13x the flow rate kinda blew my mind.
- yabones 4y agoThe scale of hydropower in QC is absolutely staggering. Even decades after the last major dam was finished, they still get >90% of their power from hydroelectric with very little other sources. Fun fact, the dam reservoirs are so large that they actually caused a slight climate change effect causing harsher winters in nearby parts of the province. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bay_Project#Local_climate_changes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bay_Project#Local_climat...
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- grecy 4y agoThe Congo river is a magical thing - it's alive, it has personality, it has presence. Here's me crossing it a few hundred kms from the mouth. https://youtu.be/OV8V3GdOcPU?t=507 https://youtu.be/OV8V3GdOcPU?t=507
- MayeulC 4y agoCouldn't this be automatically generated from wikidata instead of keeping a manual list?
- wellthisisgreat 4y agoIs there any ecological concern re: water flow rate in rivers reducing over time? Akin to deforestation, extinction, etc.?
- balakk 4y agoOrinoco flow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTrk4X9ACtw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTrk4X9ACtw :)
- jcalx 4y agoThe sverdrup [0] is a unit used in oceanography to measure the volumetric flow of ocean currents, although as a unit of flow it can describe rivers as well. The flow of the Amazon — a full order of magnitude above any other river — is only about 0.2 Sv. About five million years ago, the Mediterranean basin was disconnected from the Atlantic and almost completely dessicated. During the Zanclean flood [1], the Atlantic reconnected with the basin and refilled it at a rate of ~100 Sv, carving the Strait of Gibraltar in the process. Imagine a river about the width of the Amazon — perhaps wider, but not by too much — but with five hundred times the flow, filling the Mediterranean by up to ten meters a day. It must have been incredible. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdrup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdrup [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanclean_flood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanclean_flood
- mannykannot 4y agoIn due course, the Casiquiare will likely capture the upper Orinoco, diverting all its flow into the Amazon via the Rio Negro - though the lower Orinoco will remain a major river in its own right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casiquiare_canal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casiquiare_canal