How is there salt in the ocean

Melting or freezing of ice can make water less salty or more salty. Finally, ocean currents can carry more or less salty waters to other regions of the world altering the salinity in those places. This summer, 27 college students Join subscribers from around the world and keep up on our cutting-edge research. Search Button Toggle navigation hidden-xs. It is estimated that the rivers and streams flowing from the United States alone discharge million tons of dissolved solids and million tons of suspended sediment annually to the ocean.

Throughout the world, rivers carry an estimated four billion tons of dissolved salts to the ocean annually. Park Passes. Technical Announcements. Employees in the News. Emergency Management. Survey Manual.

The oceans cover about 70 percent of the Earth's surface, and that about 97 percent of all water on and in the Earth is saline—there's a lot of salty water on our planet. Find out here how the water in the seas became salty. Why is the ocean salty?

Rivers discharge mineral-rich water to the oceans. One way minerals and salts are deposited into the oceans is from outflow from rivers, which drain the landscape, thus causing the oceans to be salty. You may know that the oceans cover about 70 percent of the of Earth's surface, and that about 97 percent of all water on and in the Earth is saline—there's a lot of salty water on our planet.

By some estimates, if the salt in the ocean could be removed and spread evenly over the Earth's land surface it would form a layer more than feet meters thick, about the height of a story office building Source: NOAA.

But, where did all this salt come from? If you get into folk stories and mythology you will see that almost every culture has a story explaining how the oceans became salty. The answer is really very simple. Salt in the ocean comes from rocks on land.

Here's how it works The rain that falls on the land contains some dissolved carbon dioxide from the surrounding air. Rocks on land are the major source of salts dissolved in seawater. Rainwater that falls on land is slightly acidic, so it erodes rocks.

This releases ions that are carried away to streams and rivers that eventually feed into the ocean. Many of the dissolved ions are used by organisms in the ocean and are removed from the water.

Others are not removed, so their concentrations increase over time. Another source of salts in the ocean is hydrothermal fluids, which come from vents in the seafloor.