How much water is there on the Earth?

Post by mturmon » Thu, Sep 10, 2015, 4:52 PM UTC

krauthammer wrote: post #20

krauthammer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of it is in Nebraska. The sentiment in the downvote is the same reason why I shared the comment. If you, as Californians, think you can just plan to take fresh water from Nebraska you're going to find yourselves mistaken.

Keep downvoting me. You're still not getting the water.

Not a down voter. Consider following the HN discussion rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) --

"Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you."

Post by cjensen » Tue, Sep 15, 2015, 4:09 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #18

cjensen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The math: (1) the linked article says there is 24e6 km3 of water in ice caps, glaciers, and permanent snow. (2) Area of Oceans from Wikipedia is 360e6 km2. (3) The statue of liberty is about 93m, (Base is 46m, Statue is 47m) Division gives 0.066km of sea level rise if all of item #1 melts into the oceans, which is 66 meters. (In a more complex model, warmer atmosphere would adsorb some of it as increased absolute hum…

Rise in ocean level increases the surface area of the ocean, because most coastlines are not vertical cliffs. What is the average slope of dry land between 0m and 10m above sea level? Reviewing the math, I concede that I may have been off by a factor of 4. But not 6.6! The estimate for the amount of water needed to cover all land but the summit of Everest is easier, since the upper limit is an ellipsoidal shell 8848m…

Indeed the model I used was simplistic.

I doubt Ocean area would change much with sea level rise on a percentage basis.

A more realistic model would have to try to make a better guess at the amount of permanent ice. The South Polar ice cap isn't going away completely because (1) with a six-month darkness, it will remain cold enough to hold ice (2) enormous storms in the Southern Ocean will generate plenty of precipitation over the pole.

Re: How much water is there on the Earth?

Re: How much water is there on the Earth?