this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2026
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Technically yes! To put it in perspective, there's about 2.5kg of water in the atmosphere per m^2 of earth surface area. If you put enough panels across the earth, you could probably do a decent job at taking some of the water out of the air.
We have to look at another factor affecting the water in the air. As we take water out of the air, it's not really a finite resource. Most water in the air generally comes from the sun evaporating the oceans. If we take the water out of the air, the sun will put the water back. There's always a balance of humidity and quantity evaporated. When the humidity is lower, the sun would have an easier time evaporating more water due to the osmosis of the water from the source (ocean) going into the air. Osmosis is a kind of log graph, so even if the humidity is lower, the exponential tail means the solar evaporation and humidity pretty much balances out at the end of the day.
It's similar thing to taking water from a river. If we take all the water from a river, can we dry up downstream? Yes! But considering the height of the atmosphere, it's like standing at the edge of the river trying with a bucket and trying to scoop everything up. Unless these water-from-air harvesters can reach all the way to the clouds, we probably won't dry anything up.