How much water do the small comets add to the Earths surface?
At a rate of one 20-to-40 ton comet every three seconds, this influx of small comets into the atmosphere would add about one inch of water to the Earth’s surface every 20,000 years or so. The implications of this added water for long range global climate, global warming, and pollution mitigation will need to be examined by the experts in those fields. Is there any geological evidence to support the need for such an “outside” source of water as the small comets? There is indeed. In 1999, David Deming, a geologist at the University of Oklahoma, published a refereed paper [Palaeo, 146, 33-51, 1999] which has attracted the attention of many scientists. His work points out that recent investigations of the movement of oceanic continental plates into the mantle, known as subduction, show that the loss rates for the water on this planet are very large as the plates carry the water deep below the surface. So unless there is an influx of water to our planet on time scales much shorter than its
Related Questions
- In the spring of 1999 some scientists concluded that the Earths water probably did not come from comets. So how could the small comets be responsible for the water in the Earths oceans?
- Is there any geological evidence to support the need for such an "outside" source of water as the small comets?
- How much water do the small comets add to the Earths surface?
