All of Earth's Water

Dave R

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.

See here.

mitcorb

Hi, Dave:
Very interesting. Amazing what a small ratio of solids to liquids. Somebody's bound to ask why all that green remaining in the illustration. But not me. No No not me.

jeff hammond

crazy to see it like this.. (makes you realize how shallow the oceans are)

regardless, that's a huge sphere of water.. outer space starts at around 60miles up.. that thing is 860 miles tall..

david_h

From Salt Lake City. . .>I was wondering what that giant blue ball was hanging outside my front window. . .

jeff hammond

@unknownuser said:

From Salt Lake City. . .>I was wondering what that giant blue ball was hanging outside my front window. . .

i just hope your umbrella is in good working order.. looks like you're going to be needing it!

david_h

But On the bright side, at least now it's easier to get to the TItanic.

EscapeArtist

Fascinating. Nice find.

I would like to see the ball subdivided into fresh water and salt water. I think that would have more visual impact with reference to the limited resources on the planet.

jeff hammond

@escapeartist said:

Fascinating. Nice find.

I would like to see the ball subdivided into fresh water and salt water. I think that would have more visual impact with reference to the limited resources on the planet.

via the link..
here are a couple of graphs showing distribution..

Alan Fraser

All the water and all the air. I'm not sure whether the air is represented as-is, ie a sliding scale of density, or whether it's all been compressed to 1 atmosphere. Either way, it weighs 5140 trillion tons.

Starling75

@alan fraser said:

All the water and all the air. I'm not sure whether the air is represented as-is, ie a sliding scale of density, or whether it's all been compressed to 1 atmosphere. Either way, it weighs 5140 trillion tons.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=total+water+on+Earth

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=homosphere+volume

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth

The average mass of the atmosphere is about 5 quadrillion (5×1015) tonnes or 1/1,200,000 the mass of Earth. According to the American National Center for Atmospheric Research, "The total mean mass of the atmosphere is 5.1480×1018 kg with an annual range due to water vapor of 1.2 or 1.5×1015 kg depending on whether surface pressure or water vapor data are used; somewhat smaller than the previous estimate. The mean mass of water vapor is estimated as 1.27×1016 kg and the dry air mass as 5.1352 ±0.0003×1018 kg."