April 3, 2017

What is the volume (in kegs) of groundwater is stored on earth?

Posted by Tom Gleeson

Last week I gave a ‘blue drinks’  presentation for a networking evening for the Victoria chapter of the Canadian Water Resources Association entitled “How much groundwater is on earth?” based on our paper from Nature Geoscience last year. Since the night was hosted at Philips Brewery, an awesome local brewery (who makes Blue Buck, the perfect blue drink, and lots of other great beer), I decided to calculate how many kegs of groundwater we have on earth or said another way “what is the volume (in kegs) of groundwater is stored on earth?

So this blog post is a skill-testing question for all the nerds out there – answer below in the comments knowing:
a keg is 58.7 liters = 5.87e-11 km3 so there are 1.7 e+10 kegs in a km3.

Hint it is more than 1.7 e+10 kegs…. and one person during the evening got it almost correct.