Posted: 2/4/2025 6:39:53 PM EDT
| Why is sea water salty and lake water not? Both get rain and run off. Both border land. What is it about the oceans that cause them to salt water when lakes aren't? |
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The evaporation stage of the hydrological cycle is basically distillation. From the ocean and land, water evaporates as H20 and nothing else. Salt is left behind. Water carried in the atmosphere as moisture falls as rain as fresh (er) water. Water "on land" comes from that. Sea water is "at the bottom" where salt collects because the salt is left behind during evaporation from sea water. There is some removal and precipitation of salt from sea water and inland seas that evaporate will add salt back to the land. |
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| I'm thinking there's areas where salt is naturally found and it dissolves in the sea water making it salty but where are these huge salt deposits? The collective oceans hold a shitload of water. To make it all as salty as it is, there's got to huge deposits of salt somewhere. |
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Originally Posted By RR_Broccoli: The evaporation stage of the hydrological cycle is basically distillation. From the ocean and land, water evaporates as H20 and nothing else. Salt is left behind. Water carried in the atmosphere as moisture falls as rain as fresh (er) water. Water "on land" comes from that. Sea water is "at the bottom" where salt collects because the salt is left behind during evaporation from sea water. There is some removal and precipitation of salt from sea water and inland seas that evaporate will add salt back to the land. This. And where you have blind basins, you get salt water and/or salt flats (Dead Sea, Great Salt Lake, Bonnevile Salt Flats). |
