I was on a hike and read a plaque that said this area used to be completely covered by water. My question is, where did all that water go? Just absorbed into the ground? Evaporated?
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Ice age took water that used to be in oceans and put it on land. When ice melted, it made big lakes but then the water made its way back to the oceans by evaporating and rivers and such. Some water is still in ice in things like ice caps and glaciers but that is likely to at least partly melt due to human activity, meaning oceans will get higher and flood some of the land again. Some of it is also land that used to be squished under ice rising a bit now that the ice is off. It was a lot of ice.
Looking back further, the earth’s plates move around and you get stuff going up or down slowly over time. There are sea fossils on top of Everest from when it was underwater.
It is not so much a question of where the water goes but where the ground goes.
You can climb up Mount Everest and find marine fossils. This means that at some point the highest ground we have on the planet was once under water.
This does not mean some biblical flood, but rather that the ground moves. Continental drift and plate tectonics move landmasses around and like in the case of the Himalayas ocean floor may be piled up into tall mountains.
There are many places that were once dry land that are now under water and others that were covered in water are now dry land.
For example when Dinosaurs still roamed the land the center of what is now the US was covered in a great shallow ocean that connected the gulf of Mexico all the way up to the arctic ocean.
As recently as a few thousand years ago what is now Britain was connected to the rest of Europe by a landmass which existed where now there is the north sea.
Between the changes in climate and Continents drifting about how much of the world was covered in water changed over the ages
There are some theories that in the very distant past like 3 billions of years ago all the world or almost all of it was covered in water.
Its very possible that the earth used to be covered in water. Recent research suggestes that ancient earth (3 billion years ago) was a water world, covered in water with no continents. In other words, it was formless and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, haha.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/04/harvard-scientists-determine-early-earth-may-have-been-a-water-world/#:~:text=Calculations%20show%20that%20Earth’s%20oceans,been%20completely%20covered%20in%20water.
The peak of Everest used to be seafloor. It doesn’t mean that back then the sea is as high as Everest, it’s that Himalaya is a relatively young mountain that are created by Indian plates pushing north, thus pushing what was once seafloor into mountain peak. Sometimes the otherway happens. Like how it’s theorized that Doggerland, which was a seafloor now, used to thrive with humans, the end of ice age however floods the area and pushing humans to higher grounds, British isles and mainland europe. Before you think of normal floods though, do remember these happens within 300 years, so it’s more like the humans realize that the shore gets closer and closer every weeks/month until separating the isles from mainland more than instant flooding.
Sea levels have changed over time (e.g. due to melting and freezing of the ice caps) but in that particular case it’s more likely that the spot you were on used to be at a much lower elevation, and geologic activity has pushed it up above sea level.
Fun fact: the very top of Mount Everest is made of grey limestone, which only forms in underwater environments, and contains fossils of marine organisms. So around 450 million years ago, it was underwater too.
Its very possible that the earth used to be covered in water. Recent research suggestes that ancient earth (3 billion years ago) was a water world, covered in water with no continents. In other words, it was formless and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, haha.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/04/harvard-scientists-determine-early-earth-may-have-been-a-water-world/#:~:text=Calculations%20show%20that%20Earth’s%20oceans,been%20completely%20covered%20in%20water.
Picture a tub full of water with paper plates floating on top.
The plates are floating but also really crowded together. Basically the water in the tub has plates covering it edge to edge.
The water isn’t stagnant. It moves a little, which causes some of the plates drift away from each other, or overlap, or brush past each other.
When the plates overlap, one is pushed up while one is pushed down. This can cause mountains to form from what was a flat or underwater area previously. If the plates move away from each other, a gap is formed that can be filled with water.
In this example the water is like the earth’s molten core (liquid rock) on which the tectonic plates that make up the continents are floating. They move around and as they do they either get pushed up, pushed down, pushed away, or slid past. Because it’s solid rock floating on top of liquid rock these changes take a long time, but eventually create drastic changes on the surface. Tectonic plate movement is how both mountains and oceans are formed.
It depends.
If water evaporates and falls as rain, it just runs into a river and back into the sea. But if it falls as snow and the snow doesn’t melt, that lowers sea level. The Antarctic ice sheet formed that way about 40 million years ago and dropped sea level about 100 metres.
Another thing ice does is pushes the crust down, and when the ice melts the land slowly rebounds upwards. Much of Finland was covered in ice during the last glacial period, then flooded after the ice sheets melted, but is now dry land.
Over longer time periods, plate tectonics affects the depth of the oceans. Young seafloor is higher – as it gets older it cools and sinks down into the mantle. If the oceans are less deep then the water ends up flooding the continents. This process is part of what made the Western Interior Seaway across much of what is now the USA.
Estimates of past sea level have it about 400 metres above the present day at the highest. To get marine rocks *really* high up required plate tectonics to drive land upwards. When continents collide the rocks crumple forming mountains and plateaus. There can also be gentler upward and downward bending further away from the main collision or through other processes. This helped create the western seaway I mentioned – the sea rose up but the land went down too.
As far as I know there’s no significant change from water entering or leaving the deep earth over the past few hundred million years.
Picture a tub full of water with paper plates floating on top.
The plates are floating but also really crowded together. Basically the water in the tub has plates covering it edge to edge.
The water isn’t stagnant. It moves a little, which causes some of the plates drift away from each other, or overlap, or brush past each other.
When the plates overlap, one is pushed up while one is pushed down. This can cause mountains to form from what was a flat or underwater area previously. If the plates move away from each other, a gap is formed that can be filled with water.
In this example the water is like the earth’s molten core (liquid rock) on which the tectonic plates that make up the continents are floating. They move around and as they do they either get pushed up, pushed down, pushed away, or slid past. Because it’s solid rock floating on top of liquid rock these changes take a long time, but eventually create drastic changes on the surface. Tectonic plate movement is how both mountains and oceans are formed.
It depends.
If water evaporates and falls as rain, it just runs into a river and back into the sea. But if it falls as snow and the snow doesn’t melt, that lowers sea level. The Antarctic ice sheet formed that way about 40 million years ago and dropped sea level about 100 metres.
Another thing ice does is pushes the crust down, and when the ice melts the land slowly rebounds upwards. Much of Finland was covered in ice during the last glacial period, then flooded after the ice sheets melted, but is now dry land.
Over longer time periods, plate tectonics affects the depth of the oceans. Young seafloor is higher – as it gets older it cools and sinks down into the mantle. If the oceans are less deep then the water ends up flooding the continents. This process is part of what made the Western Interior Seaway across much of what is now the USA.
Estimates of past sea level have it about 400 metres above the present day at the highest. To get marine rocks *really* high up required plate tectonics to drive land upwards. When continents collide the rocks crumple forming mountains and plateaus. There can also be gentler upward and downward bending further away from the main collision or through other processes. This helped create the western seaway I mentioned – the sea rose up but the land went down too.
As far as I know there’s no significant change from water entering or leaving the deep earth over the past few hundred million years.
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