The percentage of earth's water found in the oceans is ______.
- A.94 percent
- B.97.2 percent
- C.90.2 percent
- D.92.2 percent
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is B, 97.2 percent. Textbooks describing the distribution of water on earth give about 97.2 per cent as ocean water, roughly 2 per cent locked in ice caps and glaciers, and well under 1 per cent as groundwater, lakes, rivers, soil moisture and water vapour together. This is why fresh water is described as a scarce resource even though the planet looks blue from space.
Option A, 94 per cent, option C, 90.2 per cent, and option D, 92.2 per cent, are all too low and would leave an impossibly large share of the planet's water as fresh water. The safe way to remember the set is that the oceans take a little over 97 per cent, the frozen ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland take most of what is left, and everything that human beings actually use comes out of the small remainder.
Read the full article: Oceans and Ocean Currents: Tides, Salinity and PYQs
Practice Questions
View allWhich of the following ocean currents is associated with the Indian Ocean?
- A.Florida current
- B.Canary current
- C.Agulhas current
- D.Kurile current
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It is a warm current of the Indian Ocean that flows southward along the eastern coast of southern Africa, carrying tropical water towards the Cape before most of it turns back into the Indian Ocean.
Read the full explanation →El Nino is a name given to the periodic development of a warm ocean current along the coast of _______.
- A.Columbia
- B.Peru
- C.Chile
- D.Bolivia
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El Nino, Spanish for the child, is the warm surface water that appears off the coast of Peru and Ecuador around Christmas in some years, replacing the normally cold Peru or Humboldt current.
Read the full explanation →With which of the following oceans would you associate the 'Ring of Fire'?
- A.Pacific
- B.Indian
- C.Atlantic
- D.Arctic
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The Ring of Fire is a horseshoe-shaped belt running around the rim of the Pacific Ocean, from the Andes up the west coast of the Americas, across the Aleutians and down through Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia to New Zealand.
Read the full explanation →Spring tides, the highest tides of the month, occur when:
- A.The sun, the earth and the moon are in a straight line
- B.The sun and the moon are at right angles with respect to the earth
- C.The moon is farthest from the earth
- D.The season of spring begins in the northern hemisphere
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Spring tides occur at new moon and at full moon, when the sun, the earth and the moon lie in a straight line, a position called syzygy.
Read the full explanation →The highest tidal range in the world is recorded at which of the following?
- A.Gulf of Mexico
- B.Bay of Fundy
- C.Persian Gulf
- D.Gulf of Aden
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The bay narrows and shallows inland, so the incoming tidal wave is funnelled into a smaller and smaller cross-section and its height is greatly magnified, giving the greatest difference between high and low water anywhere on earth.
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