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A lead weight on a string will let you measure a pond's depth. But how to gauge the ocean's depths -- or total size? Using satellites, oceanographers have pinned the number down.
Using lead weights and depth sounders, scientists have made surprisingly accurate estimates of the ocean's depths in the past. Now, with satellites and radar, researchers have pinned down a more accurate answer to that age-old query: How deep is the ocean? And how big?
As long ago as 1888, John Murray dangled lead weights from a rope off a ship to calculate the ocean's volume -- the product of area and mean ocean depth. Using satellite data, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) set out to more accurately answer that question -- and found out that it's 320 million cubic miles.
And despite miles-deep abysses like the Mariana Trench, the ocean's mean depth is just 2.29 miles, thanks to the varied and bumpy ocean floor.
"A lot of water values are taken for granted," said Matthew Charette, an associate scientist in WHOI's Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry who is part of a research effort to audit all the water on the planet.. "If you want to know the water volume on the planet, you Google it and you get five different numbers, most of them 30- or 40-year-old values."
Until now.
Using satellite measurements, Charette and co-investigator Walter H.F. Smith, a geophysicist at the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have come with up the new ocean volume and depth figures. Their work is published in the current issue of the journal Oceanography.
Interestingly, the researchers report that the world's total ocean volume is less than the most recent estimates by a volume equivalent to about five times the Gulf of Mexico, or 500 times the Great Lakes. The trend toward a progressive lowering of volume estimates is not because the world's oceans are losing water. Rather, it reflects a greater ability to locate undersea mountain ranges and other formations, which take up space that would otherwise be occupied by water.
Satellite measurements reveal that ocean bottoms "are bumpier and more mountainous than had been imagined," said Smith. As measurements improve, ocean-volume values are lowering, he notes, emphasizing that this does not reflect an actual lessening of water but a more accurate accounting of undersea formations.
Satellite-based radar cannot "see" the ocean bottom, he explains. Rather, it measures the ocean surface, which reflects what lies beneath. For instance, if a mountain range lurks under a certain part of the ocean, the surface above it will bulge outward. "I take the data set and estimate the location and height of the mountains," Smith says.
The satellite project has covered virtually all the world's oceans, except for some areas of the Arctic that are covered with ice, he says. The result is a "new world map" of the oceans, Smith adds. "Matt and I are seeing a better picture of the shape and volume of oceans."
But satellite measurements have their shortcomings. "There is a problem of spatial resolution, like an out-of-focus camera," says Smith. "We're measuring the sea surface that is affected by mountains," he says, "but we're seeing only really big mountains, and in a blurry way. The resolution is 15 times worse than our maps of Mars and the moon."
Consequently, the researchers say, more ship-based measurements are needed to augment and "fine tune" the satellite data. And so far, ship-based sonar and other instrumentation have mapped only 10% of the Earth's seafloor. "We have gaps in echosounding measurements as wide as New Jersey," says Smith.
It would take 10 ships 20 years to measure all the ocean-floor depths with an echsounder, according to published U.S. Navy estimates.
"That would come to about $2 billion," Smith says. "NASA is spending more than that on a probe to [the Jupiter moon] Europa."
Fuente: FOXNews.com
