Saltier Oceans Could Have Prevented Earth From Freezing (theguardian.com) 42
The Sun shone 20% less brightly on early Earth, and yet fossil evidence shows that our planet had warm shallow seas where stromatolites -- microbial mats -- thrived. Now a study may have solved the "faint young Sun paradox," showing that saltier oceans could have prevented Earth from freezing over during Archean times, 3bn years ago. From a report: We all know that the composition of the atmosphere (particularly the abundance of greenhouse gases) plays a crucial role in tempering Earth's climate, but what about the composition of the oceans? To answer this question researchers used an ocean-atmosphere general circulation model to investigate the impact of salinity.
They show that saltier oceans result in warmer climates, partly because the salt depresses the freezing point of seawater and inhibits sea-ice formation, but mostly because the greater density of salty water alters ocean circulation patterns and aids heat transport to the poles. Under their Archean scenario they show that present-day levels of salinity produce a severely glaciated world with only a narrow strip of open water at the equator. But pushing salinity up to 40% greater than today revealed a warmer Archean world, with average surface temperatures of more than 20C, and ice only appearing seasonally at the poles. Their findings are reported in Geophysical Research Letters.
They show that saltier oceans result in warmer climates, partly because the salt depresses the freezing point of seawater and inhibits sea-ice formation, but mostly because the greater density of salty water alters ocean circulation patterns and aids heat transport to the poles. Under their Archean scenario they show that present-day levels of salinity produce a severely glaciated world with only a narrow strip of open water at the equator. But pushing salinity up to 40% greater than today revealed a warmer Archean world, with average surface temperatures of more than 20C, and ice only appearing seasonally at the poles. Their findings are reported in Geophysical Research Letters.
the amount of luck (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: the amount of luck (Score:5, Funny)
Which alien did it and why are you calling them intelligent? They put the plumbing and entertainment center in the same organs...
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That's because the plumbing is used for attraction.
Take goats [modernfarmer.com] for example.
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We used to raise goats
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Not clicking on any URL that includes the string "goat sex".
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*sigh* don't blame you
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No no, it's fine you see because it's "goat sex", not "goat secx".
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"His creation was perfect."
"soon there will be a new Earth a perfect Earth"
unless god goes and fucks it up again
Re: the amount of luck (Score:4, Funny)
I love this game;
Actual Earnest Religious Belief or Sarcastic Shit-posting?
Guess correctly and win the grand prize!
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So this is /. ja?
ja
und zis is a fundamentalist ja?
ja
so zis is funny ja?
ja! That's a good one!
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Re:the amount of luck (Score:5, Informative)
> It it probably not luck, but points towards intelligent design more than anything. Too many coincidences to be just random.
Maybe you were being facetious, but the term for it is "anthropic principle". Intelligent life will only show up under ideal (lucky) conditions, which do happen every few billion planets or so. Essentially we are the product of "luck" such that if we look around it looks like too much coincidence. But we are not a random observer observing random planets, we are the product of narrow circumstances and thus will be born inside these narrow circumstances.
To misquote the orange dude with Tribbles on his head, we couldn't have evolved on a "shithole planet".
The close calls of nuclear war during the Cold War were probably also a filter. There's almost a dozen (known) times we were on the brink of offing ourselves.
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I mean not really.. That is like a lottery winner suggesting that their win was not random chance, but because they were good at picking numbers. OF COURSE people in the civilization that exists on the rare planet where things align by random chance are going to suspect That they are special in some way... Regardless of whether you chose to try and call that "luck" or "design" doesn't matter; it is a distorted / biased view of reality to assume anything other than pure randomness played
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no wonder it is hard to find life elsewhere
I think that's a grossly short sighted statement from a species that has yet to personally land on anything outside of their own natural satellite, of which they only spent a few days upon at most. And has only sent probes with minimal capabilities to search for life to something only 0.6AU away, something that only having occurred a mere decade ago. And even then in that ten year time having only covered the distance a human walking at 2 MPH would cover in nine hours.
So before we start calling it, "gosh
Re: the amount of luck (Score:1)
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And has only sent probes with minimal capabilities to search for life
Voyager has zero capabilities to do this unless its a big space monster living in an asteroid that pops out.
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More likely, DNA-based life is probably pretty resilient to global change. Once it gets kicked off (which happened during this salty Archaeon period, btw), it's probably hard to get rid of.
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If you're in Vegas, and you have a long, long run of "luck," security sweeps in, and then the police. They know that there is no such thing as luck that lasts over a long period of time.
Switch to regular salt (Score:4, Funny)
Clearly everybody should stop using that fancy sea salt and just switch to regular salt.
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Re: Switch to regular salt (Score:2)
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Isn't that backwards? Wouldn't you want to remove the salt from the sea to drop the temperatures?
On another not, that range is crazy. 40% delta in salt takes us from a near snowball Earth all the way to the caps melting over the summer. If we fix our water supply problems with de-salination, we will cut planetary warming for free.
Global Warming solved (Score:1)
Excellent.
Until now one of the biggest concerns with global warming was it would melt the poles, especially the freshwater ice sheets, causing not only a rise in sea level but also desalinating the Atlantic streams. What this new information tells us is, salty oceans keep more of the globe warm, so if we dilute the oceans with melted freshwater the areas near the poles will cool off.
Re:Global Warming solved (Score:4, Insightful)
Did all that melted fresh water keep the Earth cooler during previous warm epochs? That's what you would need to show. There may be enough total ice to disrupt conveyor belt and thermohaline ocean currents, but it may simply mean that heat doesn't flow to the poles.
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This is why Lake Mead is drying up and California is in a 1200 year drought. Just a theory but the gulf stream impacts upwelling from New Zealand as after it sinks to the deep ocean is travels back there. La Nina happened too for centuries when the gulf stream slowed or halted during the warming as birds in the Gallopogos evolved longer beaks proving evolution as La Nina drought hit the region.
This la Nina has been going on for years now unlike most which last months probably due to the gulf stream losing o
Oceans are getting more salty, not less (Score:2)
Ocean salt is caused by runoff from rivers bringing salt into the oceans, while evaporation leaves the salt behind.
What could account for the oceans being more salty long ago, and less salty now?
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Probably because most of the fresh water was frozen from glaciers running pole to pole
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The title of the post is
Saltier Oceans Could Have Prevented Earth From Freezing
So if you have glaciers pole to pole, the earth is...freezing.
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This is referred to as the slushball vs iceball theory debate. Geological evidence from rocks in Northern Canada that were at the equator at the time show glaciation. Problem is it would still be here today as the snow would reflect the heat from the sun back to space turning earth into Antarctica. This theory shows water from the equator that is very saline and had a lower freezing point flowed from the equator like the gulf stream does today created pockets of liquid water. Make no doubt outside the warm
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And what exactly caused these pockets of water at the equator to be so saturated with salt?
Where did it go? (Score:1)
Geology shows ice caps hit the equator (Score:2)
There was no open seas. I think the slushball theory and this is trying to make sense of it as such an event would make it impossible for them to leave. The rocks in question in Northern Canada today had signatures of magnetism that showed equalateral