Blog Post

All the water, all the air

ADAM NIEMAN / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
"Left: All the water in the world (1.4087 billion cubic kilometres of it) including sea water, ice, lakes, rivers, ground water, clouds, etc. Right: All the air in the atmosphere (5140 trillion tonnes of it) gathered into a ball at sea-level density. Shown on the same scale as the Earth."

— blog.phiffer.org "Caption: Global water and air volume. Conceptual computer artwork of the total volume of water on Earth (left) and of air in the Earth's atmosphere (right) shown as spheres (blue and pink). The spheres show how finite water and air supplies are. The water sphere measures 1390 kilometres across and has a volume of 1.4 billion cubic kilometres. This includes all the water in the oceans, seas, ice caps, lakes and rivers as well as ground water, and that in the atmosphere. The air sphere measures 1999 kilometres across and weighs 5140 trillion tonnes. As the atmosphere extends from Earth it becomes less dense. Half of the air lies within the first 5 kilometres of the atmosphere."

— Science Photo Library

Published March 15, 2008

(2008, March 15). All the water, all the air. Retrieved from https://www.buildinggreen.com/news-article/all-water-all-air

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Comments

March 20, 2008 - 6:07 pm

To estimate an answer to Tristan's question, I looked up the world's proven oil reserves from the EIA. The highest estimate was about 1,300 billion barrels, or 200 cubic kilometers: one ten-millionth the volume of the water shown here. The diameter (width) of the sphere is around 4 kilometers across, or several hundred times smaller than the water "droplet". At the scale of this picture, it would probably be around one pixel on your screen.

There is plenty of dispute over these figures (and my math is very rough), but I think that the general scale is still appropriate. There aren't many fluids as abundant on our planet as air and water... and there isn't much of those!

March 17, 2008 - 5:00 am

I would like to see a third one of these, with the world's total oil supply. I was surprised at how small the water sphere appears -- I imagine oil would be quite small