Rob Seaman said: > Almost the definition of a moot point, but if the oceans boil into the > atmosphere, how much of a change will that make to the Earth's moment of > inertia - and in what direction?
Wikipedia says that the current moment of inertia is 8.04e37, which is close enough to the numbers I get by calculating it, so let's go with that. The mass of the hydrosphere is, apparently, 1.4e21. It's all close to the surface, so let's say that the radius is 6.378e6. So the moment of inertia of the oceans is mr^2 = 5.7e34. That's less than 0.1% of the total. If it turns into atmospheric steam at, say, an average height of 1km, that adds a tiny amount to the MoI - about 0.03% of the water's total, or under 0.2 part per million of the earth's total. If it all escapes into space, it reduces the MoI by 0.1% or so. [All quantities are in SI units without prefixes.] -- Clive D.W. Feather | If you lie to the compiler, Email: cl...@davros.org | it will get its revenge. Web: http://www.davros.org | - Henry Spencer Mobile: +44 7973 377646 _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list LEAPSECS@leapsecond.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
