Largest Lakes in the World by Water Volume

About This Dataset

Surface area is the usual way to rank lakes, but volume decides how much water they actually hold. This chart ranks the world's largest lakes by water volume in cubic kilometres, which reorders them sharply against an area ranking.

Analysis

Caspian Sea holds 78,200 cubic kilometres of water, 3.3 times the 23,610 of Baikal. Volume and area rank lakes differently: Superior covers 82,100 square kilometres against 31,722 for Baikal - 2.6 times the surface - yet holds 12,070 cubic kilometres against 23,610, because Baikal is far deeper. The 12 lakes here hold 163,141 cubic kilometres between them, and the top two account for 62% of that. Ranked by the water they actually contain rather than the ground they cover, several of the world's best-known great lakes fall well down the order.

Source: Wikipedia - List of lakes by volume

Key Findings

🏆

Caspian Sea leads in Water volume (cubic kilometres) with 78,200.

📊

Average Water volume (cubic kilometres): 13,595 · median: 5,165.

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Gap: Caspian Sea is 47.9× larger than Ontario.