Convert Petaliter (PL) to Acre-Foot (US Survey) (ac*ft (US)) instantly.
About these units
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.
Acre-Foot (US Survey) (ac*ft (US))
The US survey acre-foot differs extremely slightly from the international acre-foot due to the slight difference between the survey foot and the international foot. While the distinction is negligible in most contexts, it is important in surveying, legal water rights, and long-term hydrological accounting, especially in regions where large historical datasets were recorded using US survey measures. This variant highlights how even subtle unit differences can have major implications when dealing with huge volumes over long timescales, such as state water budgets and inter-state compacts.