Читать книгу Oceans For Dummies - Joseph Kraynak - Страница 12

The ocean is big. How big? Well, it covers about 360 million square kilometers (140 million square miles), which is just a smidgen more than 70 percent of Earth’s surface. Volume-wise it contains approximately 1.3 billion cubic kilometers (321 million cubic miles) of water — that translates to about 352 quintillion gallons, which accounts for about 97 percent of Earth’s water. In terms of living space, the ocean comprises about 99 percent of the biosphere — all land, water, and atmosphere where life on Earth exists.

Because it’s so big, people have developed all sorts of ways to slice and dice it to better understand and describe the different areas that make it up.