• Question: why is the sea salty?

    Asked by to James on 27 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: James Bell

      James Bell answered on 27 Jun 2014:

      The sea is salty because rain and rivers wash minerals from the land into the oceans.

      These days the oceans are in what we call steady state – which means the saltiness (salinity) doesn’t change over time very much. This is because the amount washed in by rivers each year equals the amount lost (mostly by deposition into the seafloor sediments)

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