The Spheres of the Earth

Nathaniel Agustin A. AluanIII – 6 (BEED)

"Spheres, spheres, spheres, spheres, spheres! The universe is full of spheres! A marble is a sphere. A basketball is a sphere. A balloon is a sphere--well, almost. The Sun is a great, big, giant, super-colossal, boiling hot sphere!

Even Earth is a huge sphere. In fact, you can think of Earth as a whole bunch of spheres.

The lithosphere  - rocks(or geosphere)

The Earth's solid surface is the lithosphere. It includes continental and oceanic crust as well as the various layers of the Earth's interior.

The hydrosphere  water

The hydrosphere is the sphere which includes all of the water on Earth. 71% of the Earth is covered by water and only 29% is solid land.

The Atmosphere  Air

The atmosphere is a gaseous layer that surrounds the Earth. The atmosphere consists of a mixture of gases composed primarily of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor.

The Biosphere 

living things

The biosphere is all life on earth, including man, and all organisms (both plants and animals). The life zone on our planet is unique.... it makes our planet different from the other 7 planets in the solar system.

The Cryosphere  Ice

The cryosphere is the part of the Earth's surface where water is in a solid form, usually as snow or ice, and includes glaciers, ice shelves, snow, icebergs, and snow fields.

How are the Spheres Connected?

These spheres are closely connected in many ways. For example, many birds (biosphere) fly  through the air (atmosphere), while water (hydrosphere) often flows through the  soil (lithosphere).

DISTRIBUTION OF LAND AND WATER ON THE PLANET

The area of the Earth surface is equal to 510,100,000 km2. Land covers 148,800,000 km2 (29.2%) and the World Ocean covers 361,300,000 km2 (70.8%). The World Ocean is a continuous water “blanket” over the Earth adjacent to all of the continents and islands and possesses a generally salty structure.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the World Ocean occupies 61% of the area and in the Southern Hemisphere, 81%. If we were able to arbitrarily divide the Globe into two equal parts so that in one hemisphere the land predominated, and in the other the water, water will appear to cover more than half of the area (53%).

The oceanic hemisphere takes up about takes 91% of the area. The land and sea are also non-uniformly distributed on the planet. Land predominates only between latitudes of 45° N and 70° N, and to the south, from latitude 70° S to the South Pole. Water predominates over the remaining part of Globe.

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