Is there more or less water than there was 10,000 years ago?

Question

I mean all water, not just fresh, and if there is more, or less explain your reasoning

Answer 1

same amount, earth is a closed system, it just gets recycled.

Answer 2

Some water is trapped in the rocks from the formation of the earth that slowly leaks upward and sometimes release through volcanoes. Some water is brought downward by subducting plates, but since water lowers the melting point of rock and therefore results in composite volcanoes spewing some of it back into the atmosphere. Some water is lost to the solar winds. Some water is decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen. Since there are too many unknown factors, it cannot be determined with any degree of certainty if there is more or less; however, it can be reasonably assumed it is nearly the same.

Answer 3

The answer depends on if you mean liquid water or if you mean water in all its states.
If you mean liquid water, then there was less of it 10,000 years ago, as a lot of it was trapped in the bigger polar ice caps and glaciers that covered much of the Earth's higher latitudes.
If you mean all states of water, there should be pretty much the same amount. The only way water can be introduced to the Earth is through meteorites bringing it from space. The only way water can leave the Earth is through hydrolysis (being split into ions), electrolysis (being split into hydrogen and oxygen), and physically leaving the Earth through manned spacecraft. Meteorite impacts are now rare, electrolysis and hydrolysis usually only occur in laboratories, and obviously manned spacecraft launches are also rare. As a result, currently the Earth possesses almost the exact same amount of water as it did 10,000 years ago, and for that matter 10 million years ago.

Answer 4

The amount would be less, but the change is totally negligible. Some water vapor in the upper atmosphere is lost to space because the mass of the water molecule is low enough that there is some probability that a molecule will achieve escape velocity and leave the earth. (See Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.) Incoming material includes hydrogen from solar winds, and debris from meteorites, but these have little water.

Answer 5

This is a tough one. I would say we have more water today.

Water molecule are hydrogen and oxygen.
The total water molecules should be free water molecules ( ice, freshwater, saltwater ) plus the trapped water molecules ( oraganic matters and inside living beings.

10,000 years ago, there are more plants which covert the water to bio mass by photosynthesis.

Now we have reduced the plants around the world so the rate of coverting water into bio mass is less. We burn more fossile fuel and releases the hyrdogen and becomes water vapor.

Answer 6

I don't think we know the answer to this question.

Earth is a closed loop system. What we started with is still here, but this theory only hold true in elementary level. Water is composed of two part hydrogen and one part water. The same number of molecules are still here, but not necessary in water form.

Having said that, we probably have the same amount as truly catastrophic event in global scale has not happened in the time frame you specified.

Answer 7

The water that was here 10,000 is still all here just in different forms. We never really lost any of our water. It is always being recycled everywhere on earth.

Answer 8

More.

If you mean liquid water vs ice, there is more liquid water now because more water was stored as ice 10,000 years ago.

If you mean all water, including ice, there is slightly more water now because the Earth is still outgassing water vapor.

Answer 9

neither the same amount of water either locked in ice caps or as vapor in the atmospher or in normal liquid form

Answer 10

i bet theres less potable or clean water, unless there were so many fish breeding that the water was full of fishcum then.

Answer 11

neither.
there are the same # of water molecules. they may not be in the same lake or sea, but they are still around since matter cannot be created or destroyed. it can only change forms.