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Relationship Between Water Displacement and Sea Levels.

Hi All,

I am working on a research project involving damming and draining the whole of the North Sea. I want to know approximately what affect this would have on global average sea levels. But I can't work out how to go about calculating this.

The total volume of water in the North Sea is 54,000 cubic kilometers. The total volume of saliant water on Earth is around 1.35 billion cubic kilometers.

If anyone can help or give me any pointers that would be much appreciated.

Regards
Farchitect
Original post by Farchitect
Hi All,

I am working on a research project involving damming and draining the whole of the North Sea. I want to know approximately what affect this would have on global average sea levels. But I can't work out how to go about calculating this.

The total volume of water in the North Sea is 54,000 cubic kilometers. The total volume of saliant water on Earth is around 1.35 billion cubic kilometers.

If anyone can help or give me any pointers that would be much appreciated.

Regards
Farchitect


It's a fairly well known factoid that 70% of the earths surface is ocean so for an approximate answer you could calculate the total surface area of the earth and see how thick a layer containing 54000 cubic km would be if it was spread over 70% of that area.
Reply 2
Original post by Joinedup
It's a fairly well known factoid that 70% of the earths surface is ocean so for an approximate answer you could calculate the total surface area of the earth and see how thick a layer containing 54000 cubic km would be if it was spread over 70% of that area.


Well yeah, but how do I do that? Ha
Surface area of a sphere = 4πr2

radius of earth ~ 6371 km
Reply 4
Okay so I think I've got it.

Volume of Water / Area of the rest of the world's ocean = Height of increase in sea level

therefore:

54,000,000,000,000m3 / 361,330,000,000,000,000m2 = ~8.97m

This seems too high though?
Original post by Farchitect
Okay so I think I've got it.

Volume of Water / Area of the rest of the world's ocean = Height of increase in sea level

therefore:

54,000,000,000,000m3 / 361,330,000,000,000,000m2 = ~8.97m

This seems too high though?


yeah I'd check that calculation - dividing by a larger number should give you a small answer.

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