isn't really as much as it seems:

http://blog.phiffer.org/post/27344630

This comparison chart is very flawed:

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.

Comparing "cubic kilometers" of water to "tonnes" of air is not a very valid comparison especially when put into a graphical form.

If you really want to make that comparison chart balanced then take "All the air in the atmosphere" and divide it into its constiutent parts:

Oxygen 20.95%
Carbon Dioxide - 0.03%
Argon - 0.93%
Nitrogen 78.09%

Then liquify those constituent parts and finally redraw all of the liquified spheres side by side. I can guarantee the chart will look COMPLETELY different as well as your preception of it.

I am not sure what the point of the chart is in its current state, but if the author is trying to backup some sort of theory that there is more air than water in the earth system then the author gets an F-.

Cheers,

I think just the water visualization by itself is interesting. That doesn't seem like nearly as much as I would've guessed.

I think just the water visualization by itself is interesting.

I will agree with you there.

What you really can't appreciate in that chart is the altitude that the water sphere reaches.

I did some mamby pamby calculations of the sphere just using visual markers on the graph:

It appears the sphere stretches from approximately (very approximately):

Paris, Ile-De-France, France to Bucharest, Bucuresti, Romania

I used http://www.geobytes.com/CityDistanceTool.htm?loadpage to calculate the distance between the two cities at:

1872km

If the very bottom of the sphere touches the surface of the earth that means that the top of the sphere is about 4 times the altitude than the International space station. If you were standing near that sphere say in Western france your preception of that sphere would be a bit different to say the least ;).

What the graph didn't address is all of the water that exists in the earths mantle. Some approximations hint at 5 times the amount that was stated in the graph:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1997/12/971217071316.htm

The graph seems to be just the tip of the iceberg when we are talking about total amount of water contained on or in the earths system.

Neat graphics though.

Cheers,

Okay, good point about the height of it.

It appears the sphere stretches from approximately (very approximately):

Paris, Ile-De-France, France to Bucharest, Bucuresti, Romania

I used http://www.geobytes.com/CityDistanceTool.htm?loadpage to calculate the distance between the two cities at:

1872km Why guess the height?

We know the volume in (1.4087 billion cubic kilometers) and the volume of a sphere is 4/3(pi)r^3

Solving for r gets 695.41 kilometers. Double that for diameter gets 1390.8 kilometers or 864.22 miles high. (I think, haven't done any of this since college.)

My raw math skills were never good. I preferred logic problems when I was in school, guess it shows eh? ;)

Thanks for the algorithm Akipt.

Cheers,