cubic kilometer
3
3.7
- noun
- /ˈkjuːbɪk ˈkɪləmɪtər/
:
kilómetro cúbico
- Situated as the downstream country in the Nile River system, Egypt receives 65.5 of the 66 cubic kilometers per year of transboundary flows of renewable surface water.
- cubic kilometers per year
Examples
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Greenland's ice sheet is losing mass at about 300 cubic kilometers per year.
Blog text (8) -
The World Water Report estimates that global wastewater production is roughly 1,500 cubic kilometers per year.
Academic text (2003) -
The average annual rate of increase was 2.0 to 0.7 cubic kilometers per year.
Blog text (33) -
Therefore, 50 million cubic kilometers of water weigh 50 million billion metric tonnes.
Academic text (2011) -
In the decade from 1980 to 1990, June ice volume dropped by around 3.8 cubic kilometers.
Blog text (21) -
From 1979 to 2000, the average summer ice volume in the Arctic was 12,000 cubic kilometers.
Blog text (4) -
If you factor in the height of the turbines, the farm occupies a volume of almost 22 cubic kilometers.
Academic text (2010) -
A cubic kilometer contains 1 billion cubic meters. A cubic meter of water weighs 1 metric tonne.
Academic text (2011) -
At the same time, the storage capacity of Sudan's four main dams on the Nile system has been reduced from a planned 8.73 cubic kilometers to 6.9 cubic kilometers due to increasing sedimentation.
Academic text (2008) -
The whole ocean contains about 1.3 billion cubic kilometers of water.
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a cube with edges one kilometer long (a unit of volume)' is directly and compositionally derived from 'cubic' (relating to a cube or third power) + 'kilometer' (a unit of length). This adjective+unit pattern transparently signals a volume measure and is cross-linguistically common, so a learner who knows both constituents should be able to infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Cubic kilometer pictures a cube whose sides are each one kilometer long, and the word cubic shows we mean length, width, and height together. So, it is used as a unit for very large amounts of 'volume', for example when talking about lakes, ice, or reservoirs.