Picture : All the earth's water in a single sphere compared to earth

[Ichingcarpenter]

This picture shows the size of a sphere that would contain all of Earth's water in comparison to the size of the Earth. The blue sphere sitting on the United States, reaching from about Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas, has a diameter of about 860 miles (about 1,385 kilometers) , with a volume of about 332,500,000 cubic miles (1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers). The sphere includes all the water in the oceans, seas, ice caps, lakes and rivers as well as groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant.







Credit: Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; USGS..
Data source: Igor Shiklomanov's chapter "World fresh water resources" in Peter H. Gleick (editor), 1993, Water in Crisis: A Guide to the World's Fresh Water Resources (Oxford University Press, New York).



http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/2010/gallery/global-water-volume.html

[Mammone]

1. like a golf ball to a basketball nt

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. Fracking for Gas and Oil spills makes you think

Humans are pretty reckless and careless with earth's water.

[Moostache]

6. Fracking PERIOD makes me worry about the sanity of humanity...(n/t)

[Nostradammit]

3. That's one hell of a water balloon!

And a very cool and thought-provoking graphic.

[BlueIris]

4. That can't be right.

That just looks wrong to me.

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. I trust the source and the science

of my link.

Think about the extremely thin earth's crust we live on
as compared to the mantle and core.


Geophysical studies have revealed that the Earth has several distinct layers. Each of these layers has its own properties. The outermost layer of the Earth is the crust. This comprises the continents and ocean basins. The crust has a variable thickness, being 35-70 km thick in the continents and 5-10 km thick in the ocean basins.

The next layer is the mantle, which is composed mainly of ferro-magnesium silicates. It is about 2900 km thick, and is separated into the upper and lower mantle.


The last layer is the core, which is separated into the liquid outer core and the solid inner core. The outer core is 2300 km thick and the inner core is 1200 km thick.



link from NASA jpl added
http://scign.jpl.nasa.gov/learn/plate1.htm

[SwissTony]

18. I did the calculations - had to use Wikipedia for my data.

Wiki states 1,338,000,000 cubic kilometers of water which gives a radius of 684 km for the water sphere as compared to an earth radius of 6378 km. These (first two figures) aren't too different from what's given at the website.

Your homework, children...1) if the entire earth was flooded to a depth of 100 metres, how much EXTRA water would be required? Answer: a lot!!!

2) after the flood, where did it go?

[Confusious]

24. Not only that,

But if the earth was flooded, at sea level, the water vapor in the air would make the air heavy enough to crush you.

[Posteritatis]

22. And yet it isn't

The Earth's water compared to the Earth is like saran-wrapping a basketball. The oceans are only a thin film.

[harmonicon]

7. Wow. That's not what I expected.

I thought there would be more water than that, and I'm surprised just how smooth a sphere ol' earthy here is.

[Esse Quam Videri]

8. Wow, that is amazing

A lot less water than I thought.

[truebrit71]

26. Me too...

...much less than I would have figured..

[Uben]

9. It's kind of misleading.....

...especially when you consider the portion of earth that cannot contain water. We live on the surface. so that is the area we are concerned with, and that area is two-thirds water. Feel better now?

[Frustratedlady]

11. Not particularly.

How much of that 2/3s is contaminated by humans? Oil spills, nuclear disasters and dumping garbage come to mind. But, for now, I'm more concerned with protecting our ground water from contamination by fracking, for instance.

We are poor caretakers of our environment and that must change, no matter what portion of our world is water.

[qazplm]

14. by percentage?

the tiniest fraction.

The problem of course is that life is fragile, and freshwater is only a small fraction of all the water on the planet.

[pokerfan]

23. only 3% of the Earth's water is fresh

[Champion Jack]

10. K & R

.

[dickthegrouch]

12. Only 3% is fresh water

Someone recently was asked how much of the total amount of water on the planet was fresh and the answer came out at 3% which is truly frightening when you consider how much of it we're polluting.

[Tumbulu]

13. very sobering

and not what I expected.......

[qazplm]

15. well

332,500,000 cubic miles is still immensely big.

[cbrer]

16. This clarifies a mis-thought on my part

If true, what I misinterpreted all along was that 4/5ths of the Earths "SURFACE" is covered with water. Not the composition of the whole 3rd rock.

[BadgerKid]

17. Interesting contrast but not surprising. k/r

Insert surface area to volume ratio argument here.

[Ichingcarpenter]

19. Jupiter's Europa has twice the amount of water

Even though its Slightly smaller than Earth's moon

Europa contains about twice the liquid water of all the Earth's oceans .

Its oceans are sixty miles deep whereas ours is only average of two.and half miles

[laconicsax]

20. Of course the midwest would have the world's biggest water park.

They have the world's biggest everything out there.

[edcantor]

21. Super graphic! Makes sense based upon..

the difference between the 8000 miles of Earth diameter, and the 2-3 miles of Ocean depth over the surface of most of the planet.

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. However, there may be a lot of water much deeper

Characteristics of Earth’s deep water cycle such as the persistence of water on the planet’s surface and its storage in the planet’s interior are critical factors that affect plate tectonics. However, the influence is reciprocal with plate tectonics controlling the fluxes of water between near-surface and deep reservoirs.

In the March 2012 issue of Physics Today [1], Marc Hirschman and David Kohlstedt explore the history of the deep water cycle as it is linked to Earth’s history, as well as the role of water in Earth’s mantle from the microscopic considerations to the macroscopic consequences. The authors also note that carbon, like water, cycles through Earth’s interior with vast quantities being stored in the mantle and that it has an equally profound impact on Earth’s dynamics.

https://dco.gl.ciw.edu/water%E2%80%94and-beyond%E2%80%94-earths-mantle

Molten rocks deep in the earths interior may be surprisingly wet, Japanese researchers say. From lab experiments, they have concluded there may be more H2O deep underground than in all oceans, lakes, and rivers combined.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0307_0307_waterworld.html

What is most notable, the scientists say, is those areas of high conductivity coincide with subduction zones – where tectonic plates are being subducted beneath the Earth's crust. Subducting plates are comparatively colder than surrounding mantle materials and thus should be less conductive. The answer, the researchers suggest, may be that conductivity in those areas is enhanced by water drawn downward during the subduction process.
...
"Many earth scientists have thought that tectonic plates are not likely to carry much if any water deep into the Earth's mantle when they are being subducted," said Adam Schultz, a professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State and a co-author on the Nature study. "Most evidence suggests that subducting rocks initially hold water within their minerals, but that water is released as the rocks heat up."

"There may be other explanations," he added, "but the model clearly shows a close association between subduction zones and high conductivity and the simplest explanation is water."
...
"In fact, we don't really know how much water there is on Earth," said Gary Egbert, also a professor of oceanography at OSU and co-author on the study. "There is some evidence that there is many times more water below the ocean floor than there is in all the oceans of the world combined. Our results may shed some light on this question."

http://www.science20.com/news_articles/water_earths_mantle_may_be_responsible_unexpected_conductivity