All the Water on Earth

kennyc · #1 by **kennyc** » Jan 02, 2013 12:08 pm

Cool illustration from the USGS:

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/2010/galle ... olume.html

The_Metatron · #2 by **The_Metatron** » Jan 02, 2013 3:45 pm

That's a nice graphic.

FACT-MAN-2 · #3 by **FACT-MAN-2** » Jan 02, 2013 6:48 pm

The_Metatron wrote:That's a nice graphic.

Very nice indeed and a bit mind boggling to me because just on a gut level I would have expected the drop to be quite a bit bigger than is shown. So much for gut feelings, eh?

It illustrates just how badly we need to preserve and protect the planet's fresh water and to do something about the ocean acidifying from atmospheric C02 pollution.

Animavore · #4 by **Animavore** » Jan 02, 2013 6:57 pm

So - not enough to cover every mountain high.

FACT-MAN-2 · #5 by **FACT-MAN-2** » Jan 03, 2013 7:01 pm

Animavore wrote:So - not enough to cover every mountain high.

Certainly not, although about 57 per cent of Hawaii, the world's tallest mountain (at 33,476 feet), is under water.

Onyx8 · #6 by **Onyx8** » Jan 03, 2013 10:39 pm

So, I assume the large water sphere is salt, the smaller is fresh, and the tiny one atmospheric?

Oh, never mind:

That one represents fresh water in all the lakes and rivers on the planet, and most of the water people and life of earth need every day comes from these surface-water sources. The volume of this sphere is about 22,339 mi3 (93,113 km3). The diameter of this sphere is about 34.9 miles (56.2 kilometers). Yes, Lake Michigan looks way bigger than this sphere, but you have to try to imagine a bubble almost 35 miles high—whereas the average depth of Lake Michigan is less than 300 feet (91 meters).

Berthold · #7 by **Berthold** » May 01, 2013 1:02 pm

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:Very nice indeed and a bit mind boggling to me because just on a gut level I would have expected the drop to be quite a bit bigger than is shown. So much for gut feelings, eh?

Earth scaled down to this size with real-proportion surface features would feel as smooth as a billard ball. You would need a globe of 1 m diameter to get a few mountains that are about 1 mm high.

trubble76 · #8 by **trubble76** » May 01, 2013 1:28 pm

When it is presented like this, it makes it easier to accept that every drop of water probably did come from collisions with comets. I always found it hard to accept as I thought that much water arriving in that way seemed improbable. I accepted it because I couldn't think of a better alternative, and because it was accepted by experts in the field without much controversy, but it seems far more likely now.

Interesting picture. :cheers:

All the Water on Earth

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