Credit & Copyright: Jack Cook, Adam Nieman,
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution;
Data source: Igor Shiklomanov
Explanation:
How much of planet Earth is made of water?
Very little, actually.
Although
oceans of water cover about
70 percent of Earth's surface, these oceans are
shallow compared to the Earth's radius.
The featured illustration
shows what would happen if all of
the water on or near the surface of the Earth were bunched up into a
ball.
The radius of this ball would be only about 700 kilometers,
less than half the radius of the
Earth's Moon, but slightly larger than Saturn's moon
Rhea which, like many moons in our outer
Solar System, is mostly water ice.
The next smallest ball depicts all of
Earth's liquid fresh water, while the tiniest ball
shows the volume of all of Earth's
fresh-water lakes and
rivers.
How any of this
water came to be on
the Earth and whether any significant amount is
trapped far
beneath Earth's surface remain topics of research.
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Earth - water - Zemlya
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