Convert Megaliter (ML) to Petaliter (PL) instantly.
About these units
Megaliter (ML)
A megaliter is one million liters, equivalent to 1,000 cubic meters. It is used in large-scale water management, including municipal supply systems, reservoirs, agricultural irrigation planning, and hydroengineering. City planners and hydrologists often express daily water consumption in megaliters per day (ML/day). For example, a medium-sized city might use anywhere from 50 to several hundred ML daily. The unit is especially helpful because it bridges the gap between the cubic meter (too small for city-scale usage) and the gigaliter (too large for many practical applications). As water scarcity and climate resilience become critical global issues, the megaliter continues to be a foundational measurement in environmental science and infrastructure planning.
Petaliter (PL)
A petaliter represents 10¹⁵ liters, a massive unit used to quantify the total water content of oceans, polar ice sheets, or planetary atmospheres. Oceanographers may describe the Pacific Ocean's volume or the total ice volume of Antarctica in petaliters; these scales cannot be expressed meaningfully in smaller units without imposing huge, impractical numbers. The PL is also sometimes used in astronomy to approximate ocean-like features on other worlds, such as subsurface oceans on Europa or Enceladus. It represents one of the largest practical volumetric units before entering pure theoretical measurement.