Experts Debate if Earth’s 1.4 Billion Gigatons of Water Has All Been Peed as Juvenile Water Emerges
Updated
Updated · Livescience.com · Jun 13
Experts Debate if Earth’s 1.4 Billion Gigatons of Water Has All Been Peed as Juvenile Water Emerges
1 articles · Updated · Livescience.com · Jun 13
Summary
1.4 billion gigatons of water on Earth may not all have passed through animals, with hydrologists pointing to “juvenile water” rising from deep underground for the first time.
0.2 gigatonnes of urine a day is Neil Donahue’s rough estimate from global chordate biomass, implying animals could have “peed out the whole ocean” in about 19 million years—well within the 66 million years since dinosaurs died out.
David Kreamer said that logic still misses water that moves slowly or stays isolated, including glacial ice locked up for hundreds of thousands of years and deep groundwater stored for tens of thousands.
Volcanoes release some of that juvenile water as steam or with lava, feeding new water into the surface cycle; once there, it can eventually be consumed and excreted like any other water.