Is The Earth Losing Water?

I was spending some time looking over various Pacific islands on Google Earth when a thought occurred to me. The islands with a flat surface that do not have a peak on them are coral atolls. These islands formed over millions of years when coral built up on extinct volcanos in the same way that limestone forms. Coral is formed from the bodies of microscopic creatures that live in warm water.

Has anyone else wonder why, if the organisms whose bodies go to form coral live in water, then why is the coral atoll above the surface of the water? If the atoll is composed of coral, composed of the bodies of creatures that can live only in water, then why does it break the surface of the water? My reasoning is just the fact that there is so many coral atolls, widespread in both the Pacific and Indian Oceans, must mean that the level of the sea was once higher than it is now.

These atolls are too widespread to argue that it is because of a local raising of the ocean floor. The tidal range may have obscured the fact that sea level was once several meters higher than it is now. Global warming is now raising sea levels but it is doing it not by creating more water but by melting ice. There is, theoretically, a fixed amount of water on earth.

Since the planet was once red-hot, it seems likely that our water is from one or more comets that landed on the earth. Even though hydrogen is by far the most abundant element in the universe, there is little free (uncombined) hydrogen on earth. The reason is that any free hydrogen is light enough to simply rise up and escape the atmosphere altogether.

But what about water? Even though water weighs 800 times as much as air at seal level, it is actually lighter by molecule than the other gases in the air like oxygen, nitrogen and, carbon dioxide. This means that wet air is actually lighter than dry air and is why the barometric pressure drops when a storm is approaching. Water, of which a molecule is two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, has a molecular weight of 10, while diatomic oxygen has a molecular weight of 16 because oxygen atoms pair up in the air, as do those of nitrogen.

When liquid water becomes warm, more of it's molecules gain enough speed to escape the hydrogen bonds that cause water to be liquid. This bonding happens because one side of the water molecule is more positive and the other side more negative. The reason is the two hydrogen atoms attached to the one oxygen atoms make the molecule assymetrical. This causes water molecules to line up end to end and holds them together as a liquid instead of a gas.

Water molecules that have escaped the hydrogen bonds are said to have evaporated. But because the temperature gets cooler as we go higher, the water condenses on particles of dust, salt and, smoke in the air and hydrogen bonds with other water molecules. This is what forms clouds, and then when the droplets of condensed water get big enough to fall back to earth, rain or snow.

But what about the few water molecules that may not come close enough to droplets of condensed water or condensation nuclei, the particles of dust, to get pulled in and ultimately fall back to the earth's surface? Since a water molecule is actually lighter than air, as long as an evaporated molecule can avoid bonding in the air to another water molecule, which would make it heavier than air, it should keep on going up and up and finally escape into space. This, I believe, is the reason that coral atolls are above the surface of the water.

The addition of more carbon dioxide into the air by the burning of fossil fuels will mean that a water molecule is even lighter than the average molecule in the air since carbon dioxide has a molecular weight of 24. Global warming can only increase the rate of water loss to space by causing more water to evaporate. The loss of several meters of water from sea level must have caused the earth's rotation rate to increase.

Notice that further evidence of long-term water loss can be seen at two large but shallow areas of water on opposite sides of the world. Hudson Bay is the vast, relatively shallow extension of the ocean into northern Canada. A number of former shorelines can be seen around the bay. This can only mean that it is contracting and there is no evidence of any uplifting of the land which could cause this contraction.

Across the globe, the Persian Gulf is another relatively shallow extension of the ocean. It can also be seen to have contracted over time since the remains of ancient fishing villages which were once on the shore are now well inland.

It is true that both Hudson Bay and the Persian Gulf are glacial in origin and that there is a phenomenon known as "glacial rebound" in which the land under a glacier is pressed down during an ice age and then the ground begins a very slow "rebound" when the ice melts. But I do not believe that the contraction of these two bodies of water are a result of this rebound. The Persian Gulf especially because it was carved by the lesser ice of bergs melting and breaking up in the nearby Zagros Mountains and then sliding to the sea. The area was not under the weight of the main glacial ice.

Not only do I feel that the contraction of these two bodies of water add further proof to my hypothesis, but I want to extend the concept from the earth to the planet Mars. It is known that there was once water on Mars because of certain landscape features, but now there is little or none left. It is not unusual for Mars, or any planet, to have had water since water almost certainly originated with comets which collided with the earth, as well as other planets.

Where else could the Martian water have gone except into space? There is also some evidence that there was once water on the Moon. If water could escape from Mars, and possibly the Moon, then why could it not also escape from earth? Albeit more slowly due to earth's stronger gravity.

Remember that water is actually light by molecule and only becomes heavy when molecules join by hydrogen bonding.

This loss of water from the earth is not something that will be noticed over any short period of time, or even a human lifetime. It is not going to save coastal cities across the world from rising sea levels due to global warming. But it is clearly happening over the course of thousands of years.