4 ms·

The answer that springs to mind from general knowledge is that rainwater picks up minerals in solution on the way to the sea, where it gets concentrated by evap

The answer that springs to mind from general knowledge is that rainwater picks up minerals in solution on the way to the sea, where it gets concentrated by evaporation. The real question is why the sea isn't saltier. Why is the Dead Sea so salty? (Because the Dead Sea is enclosed and in a hot location, so evaporation happens faster.) Why aren't the oceans as salty as the Dead Sea? What is cause of equilibrium? The article briefly mentions (a) "organisms" using the salts, and (b) concentrations continuing to rise (!). So is the ocean on its way to being as dead as the Dead Sea, just really slowly, or what?

actionfromafar 3y ago
It was less salty in the past, so I always assumed it will get saltier and saltier. Edit: Our blood has the same salt concentration the ocean had when our ancestors formed or split off or something. Someone with actual knowledge will surely come along and enlighten us with a comment.
marricks 3y ago
Exactly. It's been around for billion(s?) of years having rain water dissolve land and run into it. Shouldn't it be as salty as it can be? Perhaps it's deep sea flour shenanigans keeping it at some stable level.
- eru 3y ago
  Well, there are also salt mines where we get the salt for eating and putting on the road from. They are dried up sea bed. So whatever process produces the mineable deposits will necessarily remove salt from the wider oceans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_mining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_mining
- qup 3y ago
  These gluten-free artisinal flours are getting out of hand.
__alexs 3y ago
Don't worry, the melting glaciers are not at all salty so that should keep the concentration down for a while.
- fransje26 3y ago
  This is fine. I'm fine.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
Does ocean salt deposit anywhere? There's huge underground stores of salt that we use for food and the roads and stuff, that's huge quantites of salt that are (no longer) in the oceans. I believe those deposits were formed by processes similar to the dead sea - evaporation, deposits, concentrations, etc until eventually the sea / lake dried out and other land formed on top over thousands of years.
- Tangurena2 3y ago
  There are some minerals that crystalize out of solution. Those are the nodules that the Glomar Explorer said publicly that they were going to scrape off the bottom of the ocean. The Glomar Explorer was really built (by Howard Hughes, on behalf of the CIA) to pick up a sunken Soviet submarine.
fouc 3y ago
> For instance, drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in 1967 revealed a vast layer of salt from the Jurassic beneath the oceanic sediments. The total global amount of halite (salt deposits) discovered was astonishing: the minimum estimate is 19.6 quintillion kilograms (19.6 × 1018 kg), or more than half of the total salt in the oceans today — the maximum estimate is that an unbelievable 95% of the present total is trapped in halite deposits. If all of this had been dissolved at one time, the salinity of seawater would have been much higher: 57‰ to 73‰ instead of today’s 34‰ to 35‰. This extreme scenario is unlikely, but one thing is clear: the salinity of the oceans has varied significantly over geologic time. The problem is how to quantify this change.

actionfromafar 3y ago

It was less salty in the past, so I always assumed it will get saltier and saltier. Edit: Our blood has the same salt concentration the ocean had when our ancestors formed or split off or something. Someone with actual knowledge will surely come along and enlighten us with a comment.

marricks 3y ago

Exactly. It's been around for billion(s?) of years having rain water dissolve land and run into it. Shouldn't it be as salty as it can be? Perhaps it's deep sea flour shenanigans keeping it at some stable level.

eru 3y ago
Well, there are also salt mines where we get the salt for eating and putting on the road from. They are dried up sea bed. So whatever process produces the mineable deposits will necessarily remove salt from the wider oceans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_mining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_mining
qup 3y ago
These gluten-free artisinal flours are getting out of hand.

__alexs 3y ago

Don't worry, the melting glaciers are not at all salty so that should keep the concentration down for a while.

fransje26 3y ago
This is fine. I'm fine.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

Does ocean salt deposit anywhere? There's huge underground stores of salt that we use for food and the roads and stuff, that's huge quantites of salt that are (no longer) in the oceans. I believe those deposits were formed by processes similar to the dead sea - evaporation, deposits, concentrations, etc until eventually the sea / lake dried out and other land formed on top over thousands of years.

Tangurena2 3y ago
There are some minerals that crystalize out of solution. Those are the nodules that the Glomar Explorer said publicly that they were going to scrape off the bottom of the ocean. The Glomar Explorer was really built (by Howard Hughes, on behalf of the CIA) to pick up a sunken Soviet submarine.

fouc 3y ago

> For instance, drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in 1967 revealed a vast layer of salt from the Jurassic beneath the oceanic sediments. The total global amount of halite (salt deposits) discovered was astonishing: the minimum estimate is 19.6 quintillion kilograms (19.6 × 1018 kg), or more than half of the total salt in the oceans today — the maximum estimate is that an unbelievable 95% of the present total is trapped in halite deposits. If all of this had been dissolved at one time, the salinity of seawater would have been much higher: 57‰ to 73‰ instead of today’s 34‰ to 35‰. This extreme scenario is unlikely, but one thing is clear: the salinity of the oceans has varied significantly over geologic time. The problem is how to quantify this change.