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Why Is Ocean Water Salty?

The ocean is salty due to minerals from rocks that dissolve in rainwater and are carried by rivers into the seas. Unlike lakes and rivers that have outflows, oceans retain salt as water evaporates, leading to high salt concentrations over millions of years. Ocean salt impacts ocean currents, marine life, and global climate.

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11 views1 page

Why Is Ocean Water Salty?

The ocean is salty due to minerals from rocks that dissolve in rainwater and are carried by rivers into the seas. Unlike lakes and rivers that have outflows, oceans retain salt as water evaporates, leading to high salt concentrations over millions of years. Ocean salt impacts ocean currents, marine life, and global climate.

Uploaded by

pepitoelmagoelproplayer
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Why Is the Ocean Salty?

If you’ve ever tasted ocean water, you’ll know it’s salty. But where does all that
salt come from? And why isn’t freshwater, like rivers and lakes, salty too?

The salt in the ocean comes from minerals in rocks. When it rains, the water
absorbs a small amount of carbon dioxide from the air, making it slightly acidic.
This rainwater flows over rocks and slowly wears them down. As it does, it
dissolves minerals like sodium and chloride—the main ingredients of salt.

These minerals are carried by rivers into the seas and oceans. While freshwater
flows into the ocean all the time, only the water itself evaporates back into the
atmosphere to form clouds—not the salt. Over millions of years, the salt has built
up in the oceans to the levels we see today.

But why don’t lakes and rivers get salty in the same way? The difference is that
most lakes and rivers have an outflow, which means water and dissolved minerals
eventually leave and get carried away. Oceans, on the other hand, are large basins
where salt has nowhere to go, so it stays.

The average seawater contains about 3.5% salt by weight, though this can vary
depending on location. For example, the Dead Sea is much saltier because it loses a
lot of water through evaporation and has no outlets.

Ocean salt is not just interesting—it also affects the movement of ocean currents,
the types of life that can live in different seas, and even global climate.

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