oops - s/b "mass" not "volume"
Careless editing resulted in a serious blunder. ER, below, pretty much caught it but didn't call me down for it -- 'perhaps he's just being merciful.
I wrote:
Earth's atmosphere has about 1/3rd of 1% of the volume of Earth's oceans
Obviously, those numbers refer to the mass of the atmosphere compared to the mass of the hydrosphere, and not to their relative volumes.
Adam Nieman @ SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY has an excellent visualization showing the relative volumes of Earth's atmosphere and hydrosphere
Just for the record, I believe these numbers are accurate:
Air mass = c5.1480 x 10^18 kg
Air volume = c4.273 x 10^9 km^3
Ocean mass = c1.35 x 10^21 kg
Ocean volume = c1.35 x 10^9 km^3
source
Gbaike, below, also may have included these numbers in his post, but I haven't waded through it yet, nor have I done much more than skim through the several, interesting posts here. Now, assuming I've not made any more blunders, to read.
Thanks all,
S
S