Did Noah need oxygen above the mountains?
Question: If mountain climbers need oxygen tanks to climb Mount Everest, how were Noah, his family, and the animals able to breathe on the Ark when they were above the mountains (‘ ... and the mountains were covered.’, Genesis 7:20)?
Answer: This question presupposes that Mount Everest was the height it is now (8,848 m = 29,028 ft), and that the air pressure would not have changed at that height above normal sea level with the addition of the flood water.
Mount Everest was not the height it is now during the Flood. Earth’s highest mountains have fossils of sea creatures at their tops, showing they were once under the sea. The possibilities are that the sea rose to cover the mountains, or the mountains were once under the sea and have since risen out of the sea, or a combination of the two.
Many creationist scientists think that mountains such as the Himalayas were probably built by catastrophic movement of the earth’s continental plates during and after the Flood (see Q&A: Plate Tectonics). Measurements indicate that the Himalayas are still rising. The rate of rise now measured is just the remnant of the processes that occurred much faster in the past.
Mountain building occurred as a part of the geologic processes that deepened the oceans to take the waters off the land towards the end of the Flood. Some mountains could have existed before the Flood, but none like the current Himalayas, Alps, or Andes in height. In any case, there is only enough water on all the earth to cover mountains about 3 km (2 miles) high, if all the ocean basins were raised. So, if the waters were not 9 km deep, but much less, the question is no longer an issue.
Even if the flood waters were 9 km deep, would Noah and company have had trouble breathing?
Absolutely not. Air pressure is caused by the weight of air above the point where the pressure is being experienced. If the water was 9 kilometres deep, then the air that was in that 9 kilometres deep volume of what was atmosphere would have been pushed out and would then have sat above the water at 9 kilometers above the earth’s former surface.
However, if we assume the worst case scenario of the radius of the earth increasing by 9 km due to the water, the surface area of the earth plus water would have been greater than the earth so that the weight of air would have been spread over a bigger area so that the pressure would have been less.
How much would the air pressure have been reduced? Less than 0.3%. This is equivalent to standing on top of a 30-m (100-ft) high building at sea level! There would also have been a negligible effect on the pressure due to changes in the force of gravity (which affects the weight of the air).
It is certain, therefore, that those on the Ark would have had no trouble breathing—without oxygen tanks.
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