# Tag Info

33

What does it take to reduce the salinity? The salinity of sea water is around 35 g/kg. There are around 1,350,000,000 km³ of water, so roughly 1.3x1021 kg of seawater (1 kg/l, which is a bit off for saltwater of course, probably by 35 g). Which contains about 4.7x1019 kg of salt. To reduce the salinity to just 34 g/kg, you need to extract 1.4x1018 kg of salt ...

19

The residue dry powder you refer to is salt. Salt is toxic to most plants. The United Nations claims the world is already losing 2000 hectares per day of farm land to salt-induced degradation. This is land that is used to feed people. In some situations, salt from affected lands can contaminate underground sources of drinking water, which will affect people, ...

9

Barring the technical feasibility of what you are proposing, there's a few points to consider which make your proposal problematic. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas. If you increase evaporation, you increase GHGs in the atmosphere. The albedo of water is very low, so if you increase surface area of water on Earth, you decrease the albedo Clouds are ...

9

The oceans are salty because the slightly acidic rainwater dissolves minerals from ores and rocks and runs into the sea. This is a continual process, a consequence of erosion. However, the salinity of the oceans has been stable for millions of years, indicating that there is an equilibrium between processes in both directions. Salt is removed from the oceans ...

5

The arrival of plants can only reduce the total CO2 levels because they metabolize carbon and oxygen. Plants don't make CO2 appear which wasn't there, they only absorb and release ambient CO2. Two ways that the ocean can absorb more CO2 through a higher atmosphere concentration, and through acidification of limestone which can dissolve the limestone. If an ...

4

First things first: This is an extremely, massively bad idea because except for a few places, there are intervening countries between India and the Tibetan Plateau. Those other countries are not going to like it when India blasts a valley through the Himalaya. More importantly, this an extremely bad idea because it will have exactly the opposite of the ...

3

Clouds form when moist air rises in a convection cell - cloud coverage area is largely controlled by the size of the convection cells, not moisture content. When temperature differences arise between different patches of the Earth, the air over the warmer part expands, creates low pressure, and pulls in moist air at the bottom as it rises. As the altitude ...

2

There is no "Global" water shortage Water is a geopolitical issue, the biggest is clean water in 3rd world and any available water in more arid regions. The nations with the biggest water issues Middle East: Scarcity issues China: Water Quality India: Both, availability is also a problem... small/moderate scale programs to address water issues, ...

2

If you're only asking "would there be enough water replaced for both the Baltic Sea region and Central Asia", the answer is simple mathematics. HELCOM states the size of the Baltic Sea catchment area to be some 1.74 million sq km (p. 10) and the mean precipitation since the mid-80s to be about 750 mm/a (p. 15). 1 740 000 km² × 750 mm = 1.740 × 1012 ...

2

That's largely because iron is scarce in seawater. It is what is known as a limiting factor -- certain physiological processes can't occur in the absence of iron, so even if nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous are plentiful many organisms cannot metabolize them. Here's one popular-science article on this theme: The Complicated Role of Iron in Ocean ...

2

We don't know, and that's why we have to develop it. that's the thing about undeveloped sciences we don't know what many of the risks are, Its a case of knowing what we don't know. Which is one big reason to develop it, so we don't cause harm accidentally. Lets be clear we already are geoengineering right now, by driving cars, changing the landscape, ...

2

Desalination of ocean water costs energy; beside fresh water, you gain salt. With some additional energy invested, you could purify this salt consisting to large extent of sodium chloride (NaCl) which may be used as table salt. In other places, you mine for rock salt from underground mines, and equally perform a purification of salt, yet without the ...

1

The problem faced by so many geo-engineering approaches is that the scale of the problem is so great. We are losing approximately 300 cubic kilometers of ice just in the Artic each year (trends in Artic ice volume). 300 cubic kilometres of ice is 3 x 10$^{11}$ metric tons of water. Lets imagine a series of pumps that are placed at the North pole and raise ...

1

Think of what happens with the fresh water that we extract via desalination. It's used for drinking, general water supply, farming and some other industries. In either case it will either eventually evaporate and eventually end up in the ocean or it is discharged back into the ocean. Some water is of course lost in the process, but it's a relatively small ...

1

Heat capacity is the amount of thermal energy it requires to heat a gram of "A substance" one Kelvin degree. Salt water of oceanic variant average salinity (3.5%) has specific heating of 3.993 J/(g K) or 3.993 Joules of energy per gram of water to raise it ONE degree kelvin. using Metric; Water has a specific heat capacity of 4.186 J/g°C, meaning ...

1

Assuming a surface ocean temperature of 288 K and a deep ocean temperature of 277 K, let's assume a mean temperature around 282.5 K. The specific heat capacity of seawater at constant pressure is 3,890 joules per kilogram per kelvin. The mass of the ocean is 1.39 x 1021 kg. Therefore the "thermal content," if I can call it that, of the ocean is 1....

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