29 August 2012

ALL THE WORLD'S WATER


This illustration (click to enlarge) shows the size of the sphere that would hold all of Earth's water in comparison to the size of the Earth.  The sphere includes all the water in the Earth's oceans, seas, ice caps, lakes, and rivers as well as all the groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your cat, and your tomato plant!

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).

From USGS - Water Science for Schools.
Illustration by James 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)

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