Ranked: The World’s 30 Most Powerful Rivers
Description
Ranked: The World’s Most Powerful Rivers
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Key Takeaways
- The Amazon is the most powerful river in the world with an average flow rate of 224,000 m³/s.
- Its discharge could fill more than 83 Olympic-sized swimming pools every single second.
- Missing from this chart is the Nile, which has a lower average discharge (3,075 m³/s) because of massive water loss to evaporation through the arid Sahara desert.
Rivers are the arteries of our planet, moving freshwater across continents and shaping entire ecosystems.
Our latest visualization ranks the world’s 30 most powerful rivers measured by their average flow rate, shining a spotlight on waterways whose sheer volume dwarfs anything humans can engineer.
The data for this visualization comes from Wikipedia’s compiled list of river discharges, which aggregates measurements from hydrological services and academic studies around the globe.
The Amazon’s Unmatched Output
At 224,000 m³ of water per second, the Amazon releases more flow than the next four rivers on the list combined.
If it were a pump, the river could fill 83 Olympic-sized swimming pools every second.
| Rank | River System | Region | Average Flow Rate (m³/s) | Countries |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Amazon–Ucayali–Apurímac | South America | 224,000 |  PER,  COL,  BRA |
| 2 | Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna | Asia | 42,800 |  IND,  BGD,  CHN |
| 3 | Congo | Africa | 41,400 |  COD,  COG,  AGO |
| 4 | Orinoco | South America | 39,000 |  VEN, COL |
| 5 | Yangtze (Chang Jiang) | Asia | 31,900 | CHN |
| 6 | Río de la Plata | South America | 27,225 |  ARG,  URY |
| 7 | Mississippi | North America | 21,300 |  USA |
| 8 | Yenisei | Asia | 20,200 |  MNG,  RUS |
| 9 | Lena | Asia | 18,300 | RUS |
| 10 | St. Lawrence | North America | 17,600 |  CAN, USA |
| 11 | Mekong | Asia | 15,856 | CHN,  MMR, LAO,  THA, KHM,  VNM |
| 12 | Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) | Asia | 15,112 | MMR |
| 13 | Ob | Asia | 13,100 | RUS |
| 14 | Amur | Asia | 12,360 | C Comments In Channel   Download from Google Play  Download from App Store  United States00:00 00:00 x   Ranked: The World’s 30 Most Powerful RiversPallavi Rao |