this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
548 points (97.6% liked)
Technology
59578 readers
3661 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If care isn't taken to avoid concentrating brine going back in just one spot, sure that could create localized problems. Buuut, you realize that the oceans constantly lose water to evaporation and their salinity is more or less stable, right? Every bit of rain or snow that falls on land (most of which returns to the ocean eventually) is water the ocean can be without and still not too salty for life.
Speaking of salinity, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (which in normal conditions, is the deep/cold return current from the gulf stream -> North Atlantic) is running into a big damned problem because Greenland is melting and all that fresh water pouring off of it is disrupting the return flow of cold water to the tropics. That's why the Gulf Stream has been so hot- it's not getting return feed from its radiator in the North Atlantic, and meanwhile the North Atlantic is getting colder because it's not cycling water back south, and that prevents hot Gulf Stream water from getting there.
Edit: I recently learned that concentrated brine regions in the oceans (called brine pools) are a thing. There are massive salt deposits (as much as 8km thick) under the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico today, the legacy of a time when the gulf was closed off from the oceans- when it refilled, the salt layer was covered over. Today, the deposition on top of it is heavy enough that subsidence within it squeezes the softer salt around, occasionally exposing that salt to the ocean water.
This sounds like an idea for a disaster movie!
(Yes, I know.)