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Earth's 1,335,000,000 cubic kilometers (320,000,000 cu mi) of sea contain about 97.2 percent of its known water [12] [c] and covers approximately 71 percent of its surface. [ 3 ] : 7 [ 17 ] Another 2.15% of Earth's water is frozen, found in the sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean , the ice cap covering Antarctica and its adjacent seas , and ...
The entire ocean, containing 97% of Earth's water, spans 70.8% of Earth's surface, [8] making it Earth's global ocean or world ocean. [ 23 ] [ 25 ] This makes Earth, along with its vibrant hydrosphere a "water world" [ 43 ] [ 44 ] or " ocean world ", [ 45 ] [ 46 ] particularly in Earth's early history when the ocean is thought to have possibly ...
In the context of ocean currents, a volume of one million cubic meters may be imagined as a "slice" of ocean with dimensions 1 km × 1 km × 1 m (width × length × thickness). At this scale, these units can be more easily compared in terms of width of the current (several km), depth (hundreds of meters), and current speed (as meters per second).
The global annual runoff into the oceans (38,500–44,200 km 3 /year) is dominated by runoff into the South Atlantic from eastern South America, into the western Pacific from east Asia, and into the Indian Ocean from India, and southeast Asia.
Approximately 505,000 km 3 (121,000 cu mi) of water falls as precipitation each year, 398,000 km 3 (95,000 cu mi) of it over the oceans. [10] [15] The rain on land contains 107,000 km 3 (26,000 cu mi) of water per year and a snowing only 1,000 km 3 (240 cu mi). [15] 78% of global precipitation occurs over the ocean. [11]
Mackenzie River – over 250 km 3 /year; Yukon River – over 150 km 3 /year; Siberia. Yenisey – over 5% of world's fresh water in basin – second largest after the Amazon; Ob River – over 500 km 3 /year; Lena River – over 450 km 3 /year; New Guinea. Fly and Sepik Rivers – total over 300 km 3 /year in only about 150,000 km 2 of basin area.
At any given time, about 2 × 10 13 tonnes of this is in the form of water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere (for practical purposes, 1 cubic metre of water weighs 1 tonne). Approximately 71% of Earth's surface, an area of some 361 million square kilometres (139.5 million square miles), is covered by ocean .
On average, the Atlantic is the saltiest major ocean; surface water salinity in the open ocean ranges from 33 to 37 parts per thousand (3.3–3.7%) by mass and varies with latitude and season. Evaporation, precipitation, river inflow and sea ice melting influence surface salinity values.